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THE STORY OF MANKIND 

By HENDRIK VAN LOON, AB. Ph.D. 

Professor of the Social Sciences in Antioch College. 

Author of The Fall of the Dutch Republic, The Rise of the Dutch 

Kingdom, The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators, 

A Short Story of Discovery, Ancient Man. 



This book is fully illustrated with eight three-color 

pages, over one hundred black and white pictures and 

numerous animated maps and half-tones drawn by the 

author. 












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THE SCENE OF OUR HISTORY IS LAID UPON A LITTLE PLANET, LOST IN THE VASTNESS 

OF THE UNIVERSE. 




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g)CI.A630456 
(IOi/28'21 






THE STORY OF MANKIND 



Copyright, 1921, By 

BONI & LiVERIGHT, InC. 



Copyright in All Countries 
Printed in the United S lutes of America 



IV 



nX^ 



To JIMMIE 

"What is the use of a book without pictures?" said Alice. 




FOREWORD 



For Hansje and Willem: 

When I was twelve or thirteen years old, an uncle of 
mine who gave me my love for books and pictures promised 
to take me upon a memorable expedition. I was to go with 
him to the top of the tower of Old Saint Lawrence in Rotter- 
dam. 

And so, one fine day, a sexton with a key as large as that 
of Saint Peter opened a mysterious door. "Ring the bell," 
he said, "when you come back and want to get out," and with 
a great grinding of rusty old hinges he separated us from the 
noise of the busy street and locked us into a world of new and 
strange experiences. 

For the first time in my life I was confronted by the phe- 
nomenon of audible silence. When we had climbed the first 
flight of stairs, I added another discovery to my limited knowl- 
edge of natural phenomena — that of tangible darkness. A 
match showed us where the upward road continued. We went 
to the next floor and then to the next and the next until I had 
lost count and then there came still another floor, and suddenly 
we had plenty of light. This floor was on an even height with 
the roof of the church, and it was used as a storeroom. Cov- 
ered with many inches of dust, there lay the abandoned symbols 
of a venerable faith which had been discarded by the good 
people of the city many years ago. That which had meant life 
and death to our ancestors was here reduced to junk and rub- 



X FOREWORD 

bish. The industrious rat had built his nest among the carved 
images and the ever watchful spider had opened up shop be- 
tween the outspread arms of a kindly saint. 

The next floor showed us from where we had derived our 
light. Enormous open windows with heavy iron bars made 
the high and barren room the roosting place of hundreds of 
pigeons. The wind blew through the iron bars and the air was 
filled with a weird and pleasing music. It was the noise of the 
town below us, but a noise which had been purified and cleansed 
by the distance. The rumbling of heavy carts and the clinking 
of horses' hoofs, the winding of cranes and pulleys, the hissing 
sound of the patient steam which had been set to do the work 
of man in a thousand different ways — they had all been 
blended into a softly rustling whisper which provided a beau- 
tiful background for the trembling cooing of the pigeons. 

Here the stairs came to an end and the ladders began. And 
after the first ladder (a slippery old thing which made one feel 
his way with a cautious foot) there was a new and even greater 
wonder, the town-clock. I saw the heart of time. I could hear 
the heavy pulsebeats of the rapid seconds — one — two — three — 
up to sixty. Then a sudden quivering noise when all the wheels 
seemed to stop and another minute had been chopped off eter- 
nity. Without pause it began again — one — ^two — three — until 
at last after a warning rumble and the scraping of many wheels 
a thunderous voice, high above us, told the world that it was 
the hour of noon. 

On the next floor were the bells. The nice little bells and 
their terrible sisters. In the centre the big bell, which made 
me turn stiff with fright when I heard it in the middle of the 
night telling a story of fire or flood. In solitary grandeur it 
seemed to reflect upon those six hundred years during which 
it had shared the joys and the sorrows of the good people of 
Rotterdam. Around it, neatly arranged like the blue jars in 
an old-fashioned apothecary shop, hung the little fellows, who 
twice each week played a merry tune for the benefit of the 
country-folk who had come to market to buy and sell and hear 
what the big world had been doing. But in a corner — all alone 



FOREWORD xi 

and shunned by the others — a big black bell, silent and stern, 
the bell of death. 

Then darkness once more and other ladders, steeper and 
even more dangerous than those we had climbed before, and 
suddenly the fresh air of the wide heavens. We had reached 
the highest gallery. Above us the sky. Below us the city — 
a little toy-town, where busy ants were hastily crawling hither 
and thither, each one intent upon his or her particular business, 
and beyond the jumble of stones, the wide greenness of the 
open country. 

It was my first glimpse of the big world. 

Since then, whenever I have had the opportunity, I have 
gone to the top of the tower and enjoyed myself. It was hard 
work, but it repaid in full the mere physical exertion of climb- 
ing a few stairs. 

Besides, I knew what my reward would be. I would see the 
land and the sky, and I would listen to the stories of my kind 
friend the watchman, who lived in a small shack, built in a 
sheltered corner of the gallery. He looked after the clock 
and was a father to the bells, and he warned of fires, but he 
enjoyed many free hours and then he smoked a pipe and 
thought his own peaceful thoughts. He had gone to school al- 
most fifty years before and he had rarely read a book, but he 
had lived on the top of his tower for so many years that he had 
absorbed the wisdom of that wide world which surrounded him 
on all sides. 

History he knew well, for it was a living thing with him. 
"There," he would say, pointing to a bend of the river, "there, 
my boy, do you see those trees? That is where the Prince of 
Orange cut the dikes to drown the land and save Leyden." 
Or he would tell me the tale of the old Meuse, until the broad 
river ceased to be a convenient harbour and became a wonder- 
ful highroad, carrying the ships of De Ruyter and Tromp upon 
that famous last voyage, when they gave their lives that the 
sea might be free to all. 

Then there were the little villages, clustering around the 
protecting church which once, many years ago, had been the 



xii FOREWORD 

home of their Patron Saints. In the distance we could see the 
leaning tower of Delft. Within sight of its high arches, 
William the Silent had heen murdered and there Grotius had 
learned to construe his first Latin sentences. And still further 
away, the long low body of the church of Gouda, the early home 
of the man whose wit had proved mightier than the armies of 
many an emperor, the charity-boy whom the world came to 
know as Erasmus. 

Finally the silver line of the endless sea and as a contrast, 
immediately below us, the patchwork of roofs and chimneys 
and houses and gardens and hospitals and schools and rail- 
ways, which we called our home. But the tower showed us 
the old home in a new light. The confused commotion of the 
streets and the market-place, of the factories and the work- 
shop, became the well-ordered expression of human energy 
and purpose. Best of all, the wide view of the glorious past, 
which surrounded us on all sides, gave us new courage to face 
the problems of the future when we had gone back to our daily 
tasks. 

History is the mighty Tower of Experience, which Time 
has built amidst the endless fields of bygone ages. It is no easy 
task to reach the top of this ancient structure and get the bene- 
fit of the full view. There is no elevator, but young feet are 
strong and it can be done. 

Here I give you the key that will open the door. 

When you return, you too will understand the reason for 
my enthusiasm. 

Hendrik Willem van Loon. 



CONTENTS 

PAOV. 

1. The Setting of the Stage . S 

2. Our Earliest Ancestors . Q 

3. Prehistoric Man Begins to Make Things for Himself . . 13 

4. The Egyptians Invent the Art of Writing and the Record 

of History Begins 17 

5. The Beginning of Civilisation in the Valley of the Nile . 22 

6. The Rise and Fall of Egypt 27 

7. Mesopotamia, the Second Centre of Eastern Civilisation . 29 

8. The Sumerian Nail Writers, Whose Clay Tablets Tell Us 

the Story of Assyria and Babylonia, the Great Semitic 
Melting-Pot 32 

9- The Story of Moses, the Leader of the Jewish People . . 38 

10. The Pihenicians, Who Gave Us Our Alphabet ... 42 

11. The Indo-European Persians Conquer the Semitic and the 

Egyptian World 44 

12. The People of the ^gean Sea Carried the Civilisation 

of Old Asia Into the Wilderness of Europe ... 48 

13. Meanwhile the Indo-European Tribe of the Hellenes Was 

Taking Possession of Greece 54 

14. The Greek Cities That Were Really States .... 59 

15. The Greeks Were the First People to Try the Difficult 

Experiment of Self-Government 62 

16. How the Greeks Lived 66 

17. The Origins of the Theatre, the First Form of Public 

Amusement 71 

xiii 



xiv CONTENTS 

PAGE 

18. How THE Greeks Defended Europe Against an Asiatic In- 

vasion AND Drove the Persians Back Across the ^gean Sea 74 

19. How Athens and Sparta Fought a Long and Disastrous War 

FOR the Leadership of Greece ....... 81 

20. Alexander the Macedonian Establishes a Greek World- 

Empire, AND What Became of This High Ambition . . 83 

21. A Short Summary of Chapters 1 to 20 85 

22. The Semitic Colony of Carthage on the Northern Coast of 

Africa and the Indo-European City of Rome on the West 
Coast of Italy Fought Each Other for the Possession of 
the Western Mediterranean and Carthage Was Destroyed 88 

23. How Rome Happened 105 

24. How the Republic of Rome, After Centuries of Unrest and 

Revolution, Became an Empire 109 

25. The Story of Joshua of Nazareth, Whom the Greeks Called 

Jesus II9 

26. The Twilight of Rome 124 

27. How Rome Became the Centre of the Christian World . 131 

28. Ahmed, the Camel Driver, Who Became the Prophet of the 

Arabian Desert, and Whose Followers Almost Conquered 
THE Entire Known World for the Greater Glory of 
Allah, the "Only True God" 138 

29. How Charlemagne, the King of the Franks, Came to Bear 

THE Title of Emperor and Tried to Revive the Old Ideal 

of World-Empire 144 

30. Why the People of the Tenth Century Prayed the Lord 

TO Protect Them from the Fury of the Norsemen . .150 

31. How Central Europe, Attacked from Three Sides, Became 

AN Armed Camp and Why Europe Would Have Perished 
Without Those Professional Soldiers and Administrators 
Who Were Part of the Feudal System 155 

32. Chivalry 159 

S3. The Strange Double Loyalty of the People of the Middle 
Ages, and How It Led to Endless Quarrels Between the 
Popes and the Holy Roman Emperors 162 



CONTENTS XV 



34. But All These Different Quarrels Were Forgotten When 

THE Turks Took the Holy Land, Desecrated the Holy 
Places and Interfered Seriously with the Trade from 
East to West. Europe Went Crusading .... 168 

35. Why the People of the Middle Ages Said That "City Air 

Is Free Air" 174 

36. How the People of the Cities Asserted Their Right 

TO Be Heard in the Royal Councils of Their Country . 184 

37. What the People of the Middle Ages Thought of the 

World in Which They Happened to Live . . . . ipi 

38. How the Crusades Once More Made the Mediterranean a 

Busy Centre of Trade and How the Cities of the Italian 
Peninsula Became the Great Distributing Centre for the 
Commerce with Asia and Africa I98 

.39. People Once More Dared to Be Happy Just Because They 
Were Alive. They Tried to Save the Remains of the 
Older and More Agreeable Civilisation of Rome and 
Greece and They Were so Proud of Their Achievements 
That They Spoke of a "Renaissance" or Re-birth of 
Civilisation 206 

40. The People Began to Feel the Need of Giving Expression 

to Their Newly Discovered Joy of Living. They Ex- 
pressed Their Happiness in Poetry and in Sculpture and 
IN Architecture and Painting, and in the Books They 
Printed 2jq 

41. But Now That People Had Broken Through the Bonds of 

Their Narroav Medieval Limitations, They Had to Have 
More Room for Their Wanderings. The European World 
Had Grown Too Small for Their Ambitions. It was the 
Time of the Great Voyages of Discovery .... 224 



42. 
43. 



Concerning Buddha and Confucius 241 

The Progress of the Human Race is Best Compared to a 
Gigantic Pendulum Which Forever Swings Forward and 
Backward. The Religious Indifference and the Artistic 
and Literary Enthusiasm of the Renaissance Were Fol- 
lowed BY THE Artistic and Literary Indifference and the 
Religious Enthusiasm of the Reformation . . . .251 



44. The Age of the Great Religious Controversies 



262 



xvi CONTENTS 



PAOB 



45 How THE Struggle Between the "Divine Right of Kings 

AND the Less Divine but More Reasonable "Right of 
Parliament" Ended Disastrously for King Charles II . 279 

46 In France, on the Other Hand, the "Divine Right of Kings" 

Continued with Greater Pomp and Splendor Than Ever 
Before and the Ambition of the Ruler Was Only Tempered 
BY THE Newly Invented Law of the "Balance of Power . 29b 

47 The Story of the Mysterious Muscovite Empire Which Sud- 

denly Burst upon the Grand Political Stage of Europe 301 

48. Russia and Sweden Fought Many Wars to Decide Who 

Shall Be the Leading Power of Northeastern Europe 308 

49. The Extraordinary Rise of a Little State in a Dreary Part 

OF Northern Germany, Called Prussia 

50 How the Newly Founded National or Dynastic States of 

Europe Tried to Make Themselves Rich and What Was 
Meant by the Mercantile System ^l ' 

51 At the End of the Eighteenth Century Europe Heard 

Strange Reports of Something Which Had Happened in 
THE Wilderness of the North American Continent. The 
Descendants of the Men Who Had Punished King Charles 
FOR His Insistence upon His "Divine Rights" Added a 
New Chapter to the Old Story of the Struggle for Self- 
Government 

52 The Great French Revolution Proclaims the Principles 

of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality Unto All the People ^^^ 
OF THE Earth 

„ XT .... 349 
53. Napoleon 

54 As Soon as Napoleon Had Been Sent to St. Helena^ the 

Rulers Who So Often Had Been Defeated by the Hated 
"Corsican" Met at Vienna and Tried to Undo the Many 
Changes Which Had Been Brought About by the French ^^^ 
Revolution 

55 They Tried to Assure the World an Era of Undisturbed 

Peace by Suppressing All New Ideas. They Made the 
Police-Spy the Highest Functionary in the State and 
Soon the Prisons of All Countries Were Filled With 
Those Who Claimed That People Have the Right to 
Govern Themselves as They See Fit ^'^ 



CONTENTS xvii 

PAGB 

56. The Love of National Independence, However, Was Too 

Strong to Be Destroyed in This Way. The South Ameri- 
cans Were the First to Rebel Against the Reactionary 
Measures of the Congress of Vienna. Greece and Bel- 
gium and Spain and a Large Number of Other Countries 
OF the European Continent Followed Suit and the 
Nineteenth Century Was Filled with the Rumor of Many 
Wars of Independence 381 

57. But While the People of Europe Were Fighting for Their 

National Independence, the World in Which They Lived 
Had Been Entirely Changed by a Series of Inventions, 
Which Had Made the Clumsy Old Steam-Engine of the 
Eighteenth Century the Most Faithful and Efficient 
Slave of Man 402 

58. The New Engines Were Very Expensive and Only People 

OF Wealth Could Afford Them. The Old Carpenter or 
Shoemaker Who Had Been His Own Master in His Little 
Workshop Was Obliged to Hire Himself Out to the Own- 
ers of the Big Mechanical Tools, and While He Made 
More Money than Before, He Lost His Former Independ- 
ence and He Did Not Like That 413 

59- The General Introduction of Machinery Did Not Bring 
About the Era of Happiness and Prosperity Which Had 
Been Predicted by the Generation Which Saw the Stage 
Coach Replaced by the Railroad. Several Remedies 
Were Suggested, but None of These Quite Solved the 
Problem 420 

60. But the World Had Undergone Another Change Which Was 

of Greater Importance Than Either the Political or the 
Industrial Revolutions. After Generations of Oppres- 
sion AND Persecution, the Scientist Had at Last Gained 
Liberty of Action and He Was Now Trying to Discover 
the Fundamental Laws Which Govern the Universe . 427 

61. A Chapter of Art 433 

62. The Last Fifty Years, Including Several Explanations 

AND a Few Apologies 446 

63. The Great War, Which Was Really the Struggle for a 

New and Better World . 456 



LIST OF COLORED PICTURES 

The Scene of Our History is Laid Upon a Little Planet, Lost in the 

Vastness of the Universe . Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Greece 84 

Rome 126 

The Norsemen Are Coming . . . 156 

The Castle 164 

The Mediaeval World . 194 

A New World 238 

Buddha Goes into the Mountains 246 

Moscow . 306 



LIST OF HALF TONE PICTURES 



FACING 
PAGE 



The Temple 68 

The Mountain-pass 148 

The Mediaeval Town 180 

The Cathedral 220 

The Blockhouse in the Wilderness 328 

Off for Trafalgar 362 

The Modern City 404 

The Dirigible 430 



LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS 



PAGE 



1. High Up in the North 1 

2. It Rained Incessantly 4 

3. The Ascent of Man 5 

4. The Plants Leave the Sea ., . . 6 

5. The Growth of the Human Skull ....... 9 

6. Pre-history and History 11 

7. Prehistoric Europe 15 

8. The Valley of Egypt 23 

9. The Building of the Pyramids . 25 

10. Mesopotamia, the Melting-pot of the Ancient World . . . SO 

11. A Tower of Babel 34 

12. Nineveh 35 

13. The Holy City of Babylon 36 

14. The Wanderings of the Jews .,39 

15. Moses Sees the Holy Land 41 

16. The Phoenician Trader , . . 42 

17. The Story of a Word 45 

18. The Indo-Europeans and Their Neighbours 46 

19. The Trojan Horse 48 

20. Schliemann Digs for Troy ........ 49 

21. Mycenae in Argolis , ... 50 

22. The ^gean Sea 51 

23. The Island-Bridges Between Asia and Europe . . , » 52 

xxiii 



xxiv LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS 



PAGE 



24. An JEgean City on the Greek Mainland 54t 

25. The Achaeans Take an ^gean City 55 

26. The Fall of Cnossus 56 

27. Mount Olympus, Where the Gods Lived 59 

28. A Greek City-State 63 

29. Greek Society 67 

30. The Persian Fleet is Destroyed Near Mount Athos ... 75 

31. The Battle of Marathon 76 

32. Thermopylae 78 

33. The Battle of Thermopylae 78 

34. The Persians Burn Athens 79 

35. Carthage ., . . . 89 

S6. Spheres of Influence ....... . , . 90 

37. How the City of Rome Happened . . . ,. ;.: . . 92 

38. A Fast Roman Warship ., . . 97 

39. Hannibal Crosses the Alps ........ 99 

40. Hannibal and the CEF. . . ,. . ...... 101 

41. The Death of Hannibal . . . ,. . .... 103 

42. How Rome Happened . . . .i .< .... 105 

43. Civilisation Goes Westward . . . . ;. . . .107 

44. Caesar Goes West ...... ;, „■. . . .114 

45. The Great Roman Empire . . ; 117 

46. The Holy Land 121 

47. When the Barbarians Got Through With a Roman City . .126 

48. The Invasions of the Barbarians 128 

49. A Cloister ,.,.,.:. . . .133 

50. The Goths Are Coming! . . ,., m m ,., . . . 134 



LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS xxv 



PAGE 



51. The Flight of Mohammed , . .139 

52. The Struggle Between the Cross and the Crescent . . . 143 

53. The Holy Roman Empire of German Nationality . . . 147 

54. The Home of the Norsemen 151 

55. The Norsemen Go to Russia 152 

56. The Normans Look Across the Channel . . . . .152 

57. The World of the Norsemen . .153 

58. Henry IV at Canossa ......... l65 

59. The First Crusade 170 

60. The World of the Crusaders ........ 171 

61. The Crusaders Take Jerusalem . . . . i. . . 172 

62. The Crusader's Grave 173 

63. The Castle and the City ., ,. . .179 

64. The Belfry . 182 

65. Gunpowder 183 

66. The Spreading of the Idea of Popular Sovereignty . . .185 

67. The Home of Swiss Liberty 188 

68. The Abjuration of Philip 11 189 

69. Mediaeval Trade 199 

70. Great Nowgorod 202 

71. The Hansa Ship 204 

72. The MediEeval Laboratory . 209 

73. The Renaissance 210 

74. Dante . 212 

75. John Huss 220 

76. The Manuscript and the Printed Book 222 

77. Marco Polo 225 



xxvi LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS 



PAGE 



78. How the World Grew Larger 227 

79- The World of Columbus 230 

80. The Great Discoveries. Western Hemisphere .... 233 

81. The Great Discoveries. Eastern Hemisphere .... 234 

82. Magellan 237 

83. The Three Great Religions 243 

84. The Great Moral Leaders 249 

85. Luther Translates the Bible 257 

86. The Inquisition 263 

87. The Night of St. Bartholomew 268 

88. Leyden Delivered by the Cutting of the Dikes .... 269 

89. The Murder of William the Silent . . ...... 270 

90. The Armada is Coming ! .271 

91. The Death of Hudson 273 

92. The Thirty Years War 275 

93. Amsterdam in 1648 277 

94. The English Nation 280 

95. The Hundred Years War 281 

96. John and Sebastian Cabot See the Coast of Newfoundland . .284 

97. The Elizabethan Stage 285 

98. The Balance of Power 299 

99. The Origin of Russia 303 

100. Peter the Great in the Dutch Shipyard 308 

101. Peter the Great Builds His New Capital 310 

102. The Voyage of the Pilgrims .318 

103. How Europe Conquered the World 321 

104. Sea Power . 322 



LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS xxvii 



PAGE 



105. The Fight for Liberty .....,.: ,.j .„ ,. 323 

106. The Pilgrims i.j i.i i„ t. 324 

107. How the White Man Settled in North America . > r.; . 325 

108. In the Cabin of the Mayflower , , 327 

109. The French Explore the West .....>. . 328 

110. The First Winter in New England 329 

111. George Washington 331 

112. The Great American Revolution 332 

113. The Guillotine 337 

114. Louis XVI . S39 

115. The Bastille . 342 

11 6. The French Revolution Invades Holland ....<> 347 

117. The Retreat from Moscow ;. . 355 

118. The Battle of Waterloo 358 

119. Napoleon Goes Into Exile 359 

120. The Spectre Which Frightened the Holy Alliance . . .864 

121. The Real Congress of Vienna 367 

122. The Monroe Doctrine . ;. .385 

123. Giuseppe Mazzini ..,.....>.. 395 

124. The First Steamboat . . ,., ...... 407 

125. The Origin of the Steamboat ........ 408 

126. The Origin of the Automobile . . ...... ,. 409 

127. Man-power and Machine-power . . > . . •. .414 

128. The Factory ............ 4l6 

129. The Philosopher .... > ,.. ,., . . . 427 

130. Galileo ............... 429 

131. Gothic Architecture . i. i. 437 



xxviii LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS 



PAGE 



132. The Troubadour 442 

133. The Pioneer 447 

134. The Conquest of the West ,. . . 451 

135. War :. . . 457 

136. The Spread of the Imperial Idea 460 

137. The End :.,>... 467 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 




High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there 
stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles 
wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this 
rock to sharpen its beak. 

When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day 
of eternity will have gone by. 



THE SETTING OF THE STAGE 



We live under the shadow of a gigantic question mark. 

Who are we? 

Where do we come from? 

Whither are we bound? 

Slowly, but with persistent courage, we have been pushing 
this question mark further and further towards that distant 
line, beyond the horizon, where we hope to find our answer. 

We have not gone very far. 

We still know very little but we have reached the point 
where (with a fair degree of accuracy) we can guess at many 
things. 

In this chapter I shall tell you how (according to our best 
belief) the stage was set for the first appearance of man. 

If we represent the time during which it has been possible for 
animal life to exist upon our planet by a line of this length. 




then the tiny line just below indicates the age during which 
man (or a creature more or less resembling man) has lived 
upon this earth. 

Man was the last to come but the first to use his brain for 
the purpose of conquering the forces of nature. That is the 
reason why we are going to study him, rather than cats or 
dogs or horses or any of the other animals, who, all in their 
own way, have a very interesting historical development behind 
them. 



% 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 




IT RAINED INCESSANTLY 



In the beginning, the planet 
upon which we live was (as far 
as we now know) a large ball of 
flaming matter, a tiny cloud of 
smoke in the endless ocean of 
space. Gradually, in the course 
of millions of years, the surface 
burned itself out, and was cov- 
ered with a thin layer of rocks. 
Upon these lifeless rocks the 
rain descended in endless tor- 
rents, wearing out the hard 
granite and carrying the dust to 
the valleys that lay hidden be- 
tween the high cliffs of the steaming earth. 

Finally the hour came when the sun broke through the 
clouds and saw how this little planet was covered with a few 
small puddles which were to develop into the mighty oceans of 
the eastern and western hemispheres. 

Then one day the great wonder happened. What had been 
dead, gave birth to life. 

The first living cell floated upon the waters of the sea. 
For millions of years it drifted aimlessly with the currents. 
But during all that time it was developing certain habits that 
it might survive more easily upon the inhospitable earth. Some 
of these cells were happiest in the dark depths of the lakes and 
the pools. They took root in the slimy sediments which had 
been carried down from the tops of the hills and they became 
plants. Others preferred to move about and they grew 
strange jointed legs, like scorpions and began to crawl along 
the bottom of the sea amidst the plants and the pale green things 
that looked like jelly-fishes. Still others (covered with scales) 
depended upon a swimming motion to go from place to place 
in their search for food, and gradually they populated the ocean 
with myriads of fishes. 

Meanwhile the plants had increased in number and they had 
to search for new dwelling places. There was no more room 



THE SETTING OF THE STAGE 6 

for them at the bottom of the sea. Reluctantly they left the 
water and made a new home in the marshes and on the mud- 
banks that lay at the foot of the mountains. Twice a day the 
tides of the ocean covered them with their brine. For the rest 
of the time, the plants made the best of their uncomfortable 
situation and tried to survive in the thin air which surrounded 
the surface of the planet. After centuries of training, they 
learned how to live as comfortably in the air as they had done in 
the water. They increased in size and became shrubs and trees 
and at last they learned how to grow lovely flowers which 
attracted the attention of the busy big bumble-bees and the 




^^ 5ToaY OF 



THE ASCENT OF MAN 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 




THE PLANTS LEAVE THE SEA 



birds who carried the seeds far 
and wide until the whole earth 
had become covered with green 
pastures, or lay dark under the 
shadow of the big trees. 

But some of the fishes too 
had begun to leave the sea, and 
they had learned how to breathe 
with lungs as well as with gills. 
We call such creatures amphibi- 
ous, which means that they are 
able to live with equal ease on 
the land and in the water. The 
first frog who crosses your path 
can tell you all about the pleasures of the double existence of 
the amphibian. 

Once outside of the water, these animals gradually adapted 
themselves more and more to life on land. Some became rep- 
tiles (creatures who crawl like lizards) and they shared the 
silence of the forests with the insects. That they might move 
faster through the soft soil, they improved upon their legs 
and their size increased until the world was populated with 
gigantic forms (which the hand-books of biology list under 
the names of Ichthyosaurus and Megalosaui'us and Bron- 
tosaurus) who grew to be thirty to forty feet long and who 
could have played with elephants as a full grown cat plays with 
her kittens. 

Some of the members of this reptilian family began to live in 
the tops of the trees, which were then often more than a hundred 
feet high. They no longer needed their legs for the purpose 
of walking, but it was necessary for them to move quickly from 
branch to branch. And so they changed a part of their skin 
into a sort of parachute, which stretched between the sides of 
their bodies and the small toes of their fore-feet, and gradually 
they covered this skinny parachute with feathers and made 
their tails into a steering gear and flew from tree to tree and 
developed into true birds. 



THE SETTING OF THE STAGE 7 

Then a strange thing happened. All the gigantic reptiles 
died within a short time. We do not know the reason. Per- 
haps it was due to a sudden change in climate. Perhaps they 
had grown so large that they could neither swim nor walk nor 
crawl, and they starved to death within sight but not within 
reach of the big ferns and trees. Whatever the cause, the 
million year old world-empire of the big reptiles was over. 

The world now began to be occupied by very different 
creatures. They were the descendants of the reptiles but they 
were quite unlike these because they fed their young from the 
"mammae" or the breasts of the mother. Wherefore modern 
science calls these animals "mammals." They had shed the 
scales of the fish. They did not adopt the feathers of the bird, 
but they covered their bodies with hair. The mammals how- 
ever developed other habits which gave their race a great ad- 
vantage over the other animals. The female of the species 
carried the eggs of the young inside her body until they were 
hatched and while all other living beings, up to that time, had 
left their children exposed to the dangers of cold and heat, 
and the attacks of wild beasts, the mammals kept their young 
with them for a long time and sheltered them while they were 
still too weak to fight their enemies. In this way the young 
mammals were given a much better chance to survive, because 
they learned many things from their mothers, as you will know 
if you have ever watched a cat teaching her kittens to take 
care of themselves and how to wash their faces and how to 
catch mice. 

But of these mammals I need not tell you much for you 
know them well. They surround you on all sides. They are 
your daily companions in the streets and in your home, and you 
can see your less familiar cousins behind the bars of the zo- 
ological garden. 

And now we come to the parting of the ways when man 
suddenly leaves the endless procession of dumbly living and 
dying creatures and begins to use his reason to shape the 
destiny of his race. 

One mammal in particular seemed to surpass all others in 



8 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

its ability to find food and shelter. It had learned to use its 
fore-feet for the purpose of holding its prey, and by dint of 
practice it had developed a hand-like claw. After innumer- 
able attempts it had learned how to balance the whole of the 
body upon the hind legs. ( This is a difficult act, which every 
child has to learn anew although the human race has been 
doing it for over a million years.) 

This creature, half ape and half monkey but superior to 
both, became the most successful hunter and could make a 
living in every cHme. For greater safety, it usually moved 
about in groups. It learned how to make strange grunts to 
warn its young of approaching danger and after many hun- 
dreds of thousands of years it began to use these throaty noises 
for the purpose of talking. 

This creature, though you may hardly believe it, was your 
first "man-like" ancestor. 



OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 



We know very little about the first "true" men. We have 
never seen their pictures. In the deepest layer of clay of an 
ancient soil we have sometimes found pieces of their bones. 
These lay buried amidst the broken skeletons of other animals 
that have long since disappeared from the face of the earth. 
Anthropologists (learned scientists who devote their lives to 
the study of man as a member of the animal kingdom) have 
taken these bones and they have been able to reconstruct our 
earliest ancestors with a fair degree of accuracy. 




THE GROWTH OF THE HUMAN SKULL 

The great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very 
ugly and unattractive mammal. He was quite small, much 

9 



10 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

smaller than the people of today. The heat of the sun and the 
biting wind of the cold winter had coloured his skin a dark 
brown. His head and most of his body, his arms and legs too, 
were covered with long, coarse hair. He had very thin but 
strong fingers which made his hands look like those of a mon- 
key. His forehead was low and his jaw was like the jaw of a 
wild animal which uses its teeth both as fork and knife. He 
wore no clothes. He had seen no fire except the flames of the 
rumbling volcanoes which filled the earth with their smoke 
and their lava. 

He lived in the damp blackness of vast forests, as the 
pygmies of Africa do to this very day. When he felt the 
pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and the roots of plants or 
he took the eggs away from an angry bird and fed them to his 
own young. Once in a while, after a long and patient chase, 
he would catch a sparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a 
rabbit. These he would eat raw for he had never discovered 
that food tasted better when it was cooked. 

During the hours of day, this primitive human being 
prowled about looking for things to eat. 

When night descended upon the earth, he hid his wife and 
his children in a hollow tree or behind some heavy boulders, 
for he was surrounded on all sides by ferocious animals and 
when it was dark these animals began to prowl about, looking 
for something to eat for their mates and their own young, and 
they liked the taste of human beings. It was a world where 
you must either eat or be eaten, and life was very unhappy 
because it was full of fear and misery. 

In summer, man was exposed to the scorching rays of the 
sun, and during the winter his children would freeze to death 
in his arms. When such a creature hurt itself, (and hunting 
animals are forever breaking their bones or spraining their 
ankles) he had no one to take care of him and he must die a 
horrible death. 

Like many of the animals who fill the Zoo with their 
strange noises, early man liked to jabber. That is to say, he 
endlessly repeated the same unintelligible gibberish because it 



OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 



11 



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PREHISTORY AND HISTORY 



12 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

pleased him to hear the sound of his voice. In due time he 
learned that he could use this guttural noise to warn his fellow 
beings whenever danger threatened and he gave certain little 
shrieks which came to mean "there is a tiger!" or "here come 
five elephants." Then the others grunted something back at 
him and their growl meant, "I see them," or "let us run away 
and hide." And this was probably the origin of all language. 

But, as I have said before, of these beginnings we know 
so very little. Early man had no tools and he built himself 
no houses. He lived and died and left no trace of his exist- 
ence except a few collar-bones and a few pieces of his skull. 
These tell us that many thousands of years ago the world was 
inhabited by certain mammals who were quite different from 
all the other animals — who had probably developed from an- 
other unknown ape-like animal which had learned to walk on 
its hind-legs and use its fore-paws as hands — and who were 
most probably connected with the creatures who happen to be 
our own immediate ancestors. 

It is little enough we know and the rest is darkness. 



PREHISTORIC MAN 



PREHISTORIC MAN BEGINS TO MAKE 
THINGS FOR HIMSELF 

Early man did not know what time meant. He kept 
no records of birthdays or wedding anniversaries or the hour 
of death. He had no idea of days or weeks or even years. 
But in a general way he kept track of the seasons for he had 
noticed that the cold winter was invariably followed by the mild 
spring — ^that spring grew into the hot summer when fruits 
ripened and the wild ears of corn were ready to be eaten and 
that summer ended when sudden gusts of wind swept the leaves 
from the trees and a number of animals were getting ready 
for the long hibernal sleep. 

But now, something unusual and rather frightening had 
happened. Something was the matter with the weather. The 
warm days of summer had come very late. The fruits had 
not ripened. The tops of the mountains which used to be cov- 
ered with grass now lay deeply hidden underneath a heavy 
burden of snow. 

Then, one morning, a number of wild people, different 
from the other creatures who lived in that neighbourhood, came 
wandering down from the region of the high peaks. They 
looked lean and appeared to be starving. They uttered sounds 
which no one could understand. They seemed to say that 
they were hungry. There was not food enough for both the 
old inhabitants and the newcomers. When they tried to stay 

13 



14 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

more than a few days there was a terrible battle with claw-like 
hands and feet and whole families were killed. The others fled 
back to their mountain slopes and died in the next blizzard. 

But the people in the forest were greatly frightened. All 
the time the days grew shorter and the nights grew colder than 
they ought to have been. 

Finally, in a gap between two high hills, there appeared a 
tiny speck of greenish ice. Rapidly it increased in size. A 
gigantic glacier came sliding downhill. Huge stones were 
being pushed into the valley. With the noise of a dozen thun- 
derstorms torrents of ice and mud and blocks of granite sud- 
denly tumbled among the people of the forest and killed them 
while they slept. Century old trees were crushed into kindling 
wood. And then it began to snow. 

It snowed for months and months. All the plants died and 
the animals fled in search of the southern sun. Man hoisted 
his young upon his back and followed them. But he could not 
travel as fast as the wilder creatures and he was forced to 
choose between quick thinking or quick dying. He seems to 
have preferred the former for he has managed to survive the 
terrible glacial periods which upon four dilFerent occasions 
threatened to kill every human being on the face of the earth. 

In the first place it was necessary that man clothe himself 
lest he freeze to death. He learned how to dig holes and cover 
them with branches and leaves and in these traps he caught 
bears and hyenas, which he then killed with heavy stones and 
whose skins he used as coats for himself and his family. 

Next came the housing problem. This was simple. Many 
animals were in the habit of sleeping in dark caves. Man now 
followed their example, drove the animals out of their warm 
homes and claimed them for his own. 

Even so, the climate was too severe for most people and 
the old and the young died at a terrible rate. Then a genius 
bethought himself of the use of fire. Once, while out hunting, 
he had been caught in a forest-fire. He remembered that he 
had been almost roasted to death by the flames. Thus far fire 
had been an enemy. Now it became a friend. A dead tree 



PREHISTORIC MAN 



15 



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PREHISTORIC EUROPE 



16 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

was dragged into the cave and lighted by means of smoulder- 
ing branches from a burning wood. This turned the cave into 
a cozy little room. 

And then one evening a dead chicken fell into the fire. It 
was not rescued until it had been well roasted. Man discovered 
that meat tasted better when cooked and he then and there 
discarded one of the old habits which he had shared with the 
other animals and began to prepare his food. 

In this way thousands of years passed. Only the people 
with the cleverest brains survived. They had to struggle day 
and night against cold and hunger. They were forced to invent 
tools. They learned how to sharpen stones into axes and how 
to make hammers. They were obliged to put up large stores 
of food for the endless days of the winter and they found that 
clay could be made into bowls and jars and hardened in the 
rays of the sun. And so the glacial period, which had threat- 
ened to destroy the human race, became its greatest teacher 
because it forced man to use his brain. 



HIEROGLYPHICS 



THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF 

WRITING AND THE RECORD OF 

HISTORY BEGINS 

These earliest ancestors of ours who lived in the great 
European wilderness were rapidly learning many new things 
It is safe to say that in due course of time they would have 
given up the ways of savages and would have developed a 
civilisation of their own. But suddenly there came an end to 
their isolation. They were discovered. 

A traveller from an unknown southland who had dared to 
cross the sea and the high mountain passes had found his way 
to the wild people of the European continent. He came from 
Africa. His home was in Egypt. 

The valley of the Nile had developed a high stage of civili- 
sation thousands of years before the people of the west had 
dreamed of the possibilities of a fork or a wheel or a house. 
And we shall therefore leave our great-great-grandfathers in 
their caves, while we visit the southern and eastern shores of 
the Mediterranean, where stood the earliest school of the 
human race. 

The Egyptians have taught us many things. They were 
excellent farmers. They knew all about irrigation. They built 
temples which were afterwards copied by the Greeks and which 
served as the earliest models for the churches in which we wor- 
ship nowadays. They had invented a calendar which proved 

17 



18 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

such a useful instrument for the purpose of measuring time 
that it has survived with a few changes until today. But most 
important of all, the Egyptians had learned how to preserve 
speech for the benefit of future generations. They had in- 
vented the art of writing. 

We are so accustomed to newspapers and books and maga- 
zines that we take it for granted that the world has always been 
able to read and write. As a matter of fact, writing, the most 
important of all inventions, is quite new. Without written 
documents we would be like cats and dogs, who can only teach 
their kittens and their puppies a few simple things and who, 
because they cannot write, possess no way in which they can 
make use of the experience of those generations of cats and 
dogs that have gone before. 

In the first century before our era, when the Romans came 
to Egypt, they found the valley full of strange little pic- 
tures which seemed to have something to do with the history 
of the country. But the Romans were not interested in "any- 
thing foreign" and did not inquire into the origin of these queer 
figures which covered the walls of the temples and the walls of 
the palaces and endless reams of flat sheets made out of the 
papyrus reed. The last of the Egyptian priests who had 
understood the holy art of making such pictures had died sev- 
eral years before. Egypt deprived of its independence had 
become a store-house filled with important historical documents 
which no one could decipher and which were of no earthly use 
to either man or beast. 

Seventeen centuries went by and Egypt remained a land 
of mystery. But in the year 1798 a French general by the 
name of Bonaparte happened to visit eastern Africa to pre- 
pare for an attack upon the British Indian Colonies. He did 
not get beyond the Nile, and his campaign was a failure. But, 
quite accidentally, the famous French expedition solved the 
problem of the ancient Egyptian picture-language. 

One day a young French officer, much bored by the dreary 
life of his little fortress on the Rosetta river (a mouth of the 
Nile) decided to spend a few idle hours rummaging among 



HIEROGLYPHICS 19 

the ruins of the Nile Delta. And behold! he found a stone 
which greatly puzzled him. Like everything else in Egypt 
it was covered with little figures. But this particular slab of 
black basalt was different from anything that had ever been 
discovered. It carried three inscriptions. One of these was 
in Greek. The Greek language was known. "All that is 
necessary," so he reasoned, "is to compare the Greek text with 
the Egyptian figures, and they will at once tell their secrets." 

The plan sounded simple enough but it took more than 
twenty years to solve the riddle. In the year 1802 a French 
professor by the name of Champollion began to compare the 
Greek and the Egyptian texts of the famous Rosetta stone. In 
the year 1823 he announced that he had discovered the mean- 
ing of fourteen little figures. A short time later he died from 
overwork, but the main principles of Egyptian writing had 
become known. Today the story of the valley of the Nile is 
better known to us than the story of the Mississippi River. 
We possess a written record which covers four thousand years 
of chronicled history. 

As the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (the word means 
"sacred writing") have played such a very great role in his- 
tory, (a few of them in modified form have even found their 
way into our own alphabet,) you ought to know something 
about the ingenious system which was used fifty centuries ago 
to preserve the spoken word for the benefit of the coming 
generations. 

Of course, you know what a sign language is. Every 
Indian story of our western plains has a chapter devoted to 
strange messages written in the form of little pictures which 
tell how many buffaloes were killed and how many hunters 
there were in a certain party. As a rule it is not difficult to 
understand the meaning of such messages. 

Ancient Egyptian, however, was not a sign language. The 
clever people of the Nile had passed beyond that stage long 
before. Their pictures meant a great deal more than the object 
which they represented, as I shall try to explain to you now. 



so 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



Suppose that you were Champollion, and that you were 
examining a stack of papyrus sheets, all covered with hiero- 
glyphics. Suddenly you came across a picture of a man with 
a saw. "Very well," you would say, "that means of course that 
a farmer went out to cut down a tree." Then you take another 
papyrus. It tells the story of a queen who had died at the age 
of eighty-two. In the midst of a sentence appears the picture 
of the man with the saw. Queens of eighty-two do not handle 
saws. The picture therefore must mean something else. But 
what? 

That is the riddle which the Frenchman finally solved. 
He discovered that the Egyptians were the first to use what 
we now call "phonetic writing" — a system of characters which 
reproduce the "sound" (or phone) of the spoken word and 
which make it possible for us to translate all our spoken words 
into a written form, with the help of only a few dots and dashes 
and pothooks. 

Let us return for a moment to the little fellow with the saw. 
The word "saw" either means a certain tool which you will find 
in a carpenter's shop, or it means the past tense of the verb 
"to see." 

This is what had happened to the word during the course 
of centuries. First of all it had meant only the particular tool 
which it represented. Then that meaning had been lost and it 
had become the past participle of a verb. After several hun- 
dred years, the Egyptians lost sight of both these meanings and 



the picture 




came to stand for a single letter, the 



letter S. A short sentence will show you what I mean. Here 
is a modem English sentence as it would have been written in 



hieroglyphics. 




HIEROGLYPHICS 



21 



The 



£ 



either means one of these two round objects 



in your head, which allow you to see or it means "I," the per- 
son who is talking. 



A 




is either an insect which gathers honey, or it 



represents the verb "to be" which means to exist. Again, it 
may be the first part of a verb like "be-come" or "be-have." 



In this particular instance it is followed by 



which 



means a "leaf" or "leave" or "lieve" (the sound of all three 
words is the same ) . 

The "eye" you know all about. 



Finally you get the picture of a 




It is a giraiFe. 



It is part of the old sign-language out of which the hieroglyph- 
ics developed. 

You can now read that sentence without much difficulty. 

"I believe I saw a giraffe." 

Having invented this system the Egyptians developed it 
during thousands of years until they could write anything they 
wanted, and they used these "canned words" to send messages 
to friends, to keep business accounts and to keep a record of the 
history of their country, that future generations might benefit 
by the mistakes of the past. 



THE NILE VALLEY 



THE BEGINNING OF CIVILISATION IN THE 
VALLEY OF THE NILE 

The history of man is the record of a hungry creature in 
search of food. Wherever food was plentiful, thither man has 
travelled to make his home. 

The fame of the Valley of the Nile must have spread at 
an early date. From the interior of Africa and from the desert 
of Arabia and from the western part of Asia people had 
flocked to Egypt to claim their share of the rich farms. 
Together these invaders had formed a new race which called 
itself "Remi" or "the Men" just as we sometimes call America 
"God's own country." They had good reason to be grateful 
to a Fate which had carried them to this narrow strip of land. 
In the summer of each year the Nile turned the valley into a I 

shallow lake and when the waters receded all the grainfields 
and the pastures were covered with several inches of the most 
fertile clay. 

In Egypt a kindly river did the work of a million men and 
made it possible to feed the teeming population of the first 
large cities of which we have any record. It is true that all 
the arable land was not in the valley. But a comphcated 
system of small canals and well-sweeps carried water from 
the river-level to the top of the highest banks and an even 
more intricate system of irrigation trenches spread it through- 
out the land. 

22 



THE NILE VALLEY 




^>^jm:>?^</./..7/ - 



THE VALLEY OF EGYPT 

While man of the prehistoric age had been obhged to spend 
sixteen hours out of every twenty-four gathering food for him- 
self and the members of his tribe, the Egyptian peasant or the 
inhabitant of the Egyptian city found himself possessed of a 
certain leisure. He used this spare time to make himself many 
things that were merely ornamental and not in the least bit 
useful. 

More than that. One day he discovered that his brain was 
capable of thinking all kinds of thoughts which had nothing 
to do with the problems of eating and sleeping and finding a 
home for the children. The Egyptian began to speculate upon 
many strange problems that confronted him. Where did the 
stars come from? Who made the noise of the thunder which 



M THE STORY OF MANKIND 

frightened him so terribly? Who made the River Nile rise 
with such regularity that it was possible to base the calendar 
upon the appearance and the disappearance of the annual 
floods? Who was he, himself, a strange little creature sur- 
rounded on all sides by death and sickness and yet happy and 
full of laughter? 

He asked these many questions and certain people oblig- 
ingly stepped forward to answer these inquiries to the best of 
their ability. The Egyptians called them "priests" and they 
became the guardians of his thoughts and gained great respect 
in the community. They were highly learned men who were 
entrusted with the sacred task of keeping the written records. 
They understood that it is not good for man to think only of 
his immediate advantage in this world and they drew his at- 
tention to the days of the future when his soul would dwell 
beyond the mountains of the west and must give an account 
of his deeds to Osiris, the mighty God who was the Ruler of 
the Living and the Dead and who judged the acts of men 
according to their merits. Indeed, the priests made so much 
of that future day in the realm of Isis and Osiris that the 
Egyptians began to regard life merely as a short preparation 
for the Hereafter and turned the teeming valley of the Nile 
into a land devoted to the Dead. 

In a strange way, the Egyptians had come to believe that 
no soul could enter the realm of Osiris without the possession 
of the body which had been its place of residence in this world. 
Therefore as soon as a man was dead his relatives took his 
corpse and had it embalmed. For weeks it was soaked in a 
solution of natron and then it was filled with pitch. The 
Persian word for pitch was "Mumiai" and the embalmed body 
was called a "Mummy." It was wrapped in yards and yards 
of specially prepared linen and it was placed in a specially 
prepared coffin ready to be removed to its final home. But 
an Egyptian grave was a real home where the body was sur- 
rounded by pieces of furniture and musical instruments (to 
while away the dreary hours of waiting) and by little statues 
of cooks and bakers and barbers (that the occupant of this 



THE NILE VALLEY 



25 




THE BUILDING OF THE PYRAMIDS 



dark home might be decently provided with food and need not 
go about unshaven). 

Originally these graves had been dug into the rocks of the 
western mountains but as the Egyptians moved northward 
they were obliged to build their cemeteries in the desert. The 
desert however is full of wild animals and equally wild robbers 
and they broke into the graves and disturbed the mummy or 
stole the jewelry that had been buried with the body. To pre- 
vent such unholy desecration the Egyptians used to build small 
mounds of stones on top of the graves. These little mounds 
gradually grew in size, because the rich people built higher 
mounds than the poor and there was a good deal of competi- 
tion to see who could make the highest hill of stones. The 



26 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

record was made by King Khufu, whom the Greeks called 
Cheops and who lived thirty centuries before our era. His 
mound, which the Greeks called a pyramid (because the 
Egyptian word for high was pir-em-us ) was over five hundred 
feet high. 

It covered more than thirteen acres of desert which is three 
times as much space as that occupied by the church of St. 
Peter, the largest edifice of the Christian world. 

During twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were 
busy carrying the necessary stones from the other side of the 
river — ferrying them across the Nile (how they ever managed 
to do this, we do not understand) , dragging them in many in- 
stances a long distance across the desert and finally hoisting 
them into their correct position. But so well did the King's 
architects and engineers perform their task that the narrow 
passage-way which leads to the royal tomb in the heart of the 
stone monster has never yet been pushed out of shape by the 
weight of those thousands of tons of stone which press upon 
it from all sides. 



THE STORY OF EGYPT 



THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT 

The river Nile was a kind friend but occasionally it was 
a hard taskmaster. It taught the people who lived along its 
banks the noble art of "team-work." They depended upon 
each other to build their irrigation trenches and keep their 
dikes in repair. In this way they learned how to get along 
with their neighbours and their mutual-benefit-association quite 
easily developed into an organised state. 

Then one man gi'cw more powerful than most of his neigh- 
bours and he became the leader of the community and their 
commander-in-chief when the envious neighbours of western 
Asia invaded the prosperous valley. In due course of time 
he became their King and ruled all the land from the Mediter- 
ranean to the mountains of the west. 

But these political adventures of the old Pharaohs (the 
word meant "the Man who lived in the Big House") rarely 
interested the patient and toiling peasant of the grain fields. 
Provided he was not obliged to pay more taxes to his King 
than he thought just, he accepted the rule of Pharaoh as he 
accepted the rule of Mighty Osiris. 

It was different however when a foreign invader came 
and robbed him of his possessions. After twenty centuries of 
independent life, a savage Arab tribe of shepherds, called the 
Hyksos, attacked Egypt and for five hundred years they were 
the masters of the valley of the Nile. They were highly un- 

27 



28 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

popular and great hate was also felt for the Hebrews who 
came to the land of Goshen to find a shelter after their long 
wandering through the desert and who helped the foreign 
usurper by acting as his tax-gatherers and his civil servants. 

But shortly after the year 1700 B.C. the people of Thebes 
began a revolution and after a long struggle the Hyksos were 
driven out of the country and Egypt was free once more. 

A thousand years later, when Assyria conquered all of 
western Asia, Egypt became part of the empire of Sardan- 
apalus. In the seventh century B.C. it became once more an 
independent state which obeyed the rule of a king who lived in 
the city of Sais in the Delta of the Nile. But in the year 525 
B.C., Cambyses, the king of the Persians, took possession of 
Egypt and in the fourth century B.C., when Persia was con- 
quered by Alexander the Great, Egypt too became a Mace- 
donian province. It regained a semblance of independence 
when one of Alexander's generals set himself up as king of a 
new Egyptian state and founded the dynasty of the Ptolemies, 
who resided in the newly built city of Alexandria. 

Finally, in the year 39 B.C., the Romans came. The last 
Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, tried her best to save the country. 
Her beauty and charm were more dangerous to the Roman 
generals than half a dozen Egyptian army corps. Twice she 
was successful in her attacks upon the hearts of her Roman 
conquerors. But in the year 30 B.C., Augustus, the nephew 
and heir of Cassar, landed in Alexandria. He did not share 
his late uncle's admiration for the lovely princess. He de- 
stroyed her armies, but spared her life that he might make her 
march in his triumph as part of the spoils of war. When 
Cleopatra heard of this plan, she killed herself by taking pois- 
son. And Egypt became a Roman province. 



MESOPOTAMIA— THE SECOND CENTRE OF 
EASTERN CIVILISATION 

I AM going to take you to the top of the highest pyramid 
and I am going to ask that you imagine yourself possessed 
of the eyes of a hawk. Way, way off, in the distance, far 
beyond the yellow sands of the desert, you will see something 
green and shimmering. It is a valley situated between two 
rivers. It is the Paradise of the Old Testament. It is the 
land of mystery and wonder which the Greeks called Meso- 
potamia — the "country between the rivers." 

The names of the two rivers are the Euphrates (which the 
Babylonians called the Purattu) and the Tigris (which was 
known as the Diklat). They begin their course amidst the 
snows of the mountains of Armenia where Noah's Ark found 
a resting place and slowly they flow through the southern 
plain until they reach the muddy banks of the Persian gulf. 
They perform a very useful service. They turn the arid 
regions of western Asia into a fertile garden. 

The valley of the Nile had attracted people because it had 
offered them food upon fairly easy terms. The "land be- 
tween the rivers" was popular for the same reason. It was a 
country full of promise and both the inhabitants of the north- 
ern mountains and the tribes which roamed through the 
southern deserts tried to claim this territory as their own and 
most exclusive possession. The constant rivalry between the 

29 



30 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 




MESOPOTAMIA 31 

mountaineers and the desert-nomads led to endless warfare. 
Only the strongest and the bravest could hope to survive and 
that will explain why Mesopotamia became the home of a very 
strong race of men who were capable of creating a civilisation 
which was in every respect as important as that of Egypt. 



THE SUMERIANS 



THE SUMERIAN NAIL WRITERS, WHOSE CLAY 
TABLETS TELL US THE STORY OF ASSYRIA 
AND BABYLONIA, THE GREAT SEMITIC 
MELTING-POT 

The fifteenth century was an age of great discoveries. 
Columbus tried to find a way to the island of Kathay and 
stumbled upon a new and unsuspected continent. An Aus- 
trian bishop equipped an expedition which was to travel east- 
ward and find the home of the Grand Duke of Muscovy, a 
voyage which led to complete failure, for Moscow was not 
visited by western men until a generation later. Meanwhile 
a certain Venetian by the name of Barbero had explored the 
ruins of western Asia and had brought back reports of a most 
curious language which he had found carved in the rocks of 
the temples of Shiraz and engraved upon endless pieces of 
baked clay. 

But Europe was busy with many other things and it was 
not until the end of the seventeenth century that the first 
"cuneiform inscriptions" (so-called because the letters were 
wedge-shaped and wedge is called "Cuneus" in Latin) were 
brought to Europe by a Danish surveyor, named Niebuhr. 
Then it took thirty years before a patient German school- 
master by the name of Grotefend had deciphered the first four 
letters, the D, the A, the R and the SH, the name of the Per- 
sian King Darius. And another twenty years had to go by 

32 



THE SUMERIANS 



33 



until a British officer, Henry Rawlinson, who found the famous 
inscription of Behistun, gave us a workable key to the nail- 
writing of western Asia. 

Compared to the problem of deciphering these nail-writ- 
ings, the job of ChampoUion had been an easy one. The 
Egyptians used pictures. But the Sumerians, the earliest 
inhabitants of Mesopotamia, who had hit upon the idea of 
scratching their words in tablets of clay, had discarded pictures 
entirely and had evolved a system of V-shaped figures which 
showed little connection with the pictures out of which they 
had been developed. A few examples will show you what I 
mean. In the beginning a star, when drawn with a nail into 



a brick looked as follows : 




This sign however was too 



cumbersome and after a short while when the meaning of 
"heaven" was added to that of star the picture was simphfied 



in this way 




which made it even more of a puzzle. 




In the same way an ox changed from 
and a fish changed from 

was originally a plain circle 

I f we w ere using the Sumerian script today we would make an 
look like 



. This system of writing down our 





34 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



ideas looks rather complicated but for more than thirty cen- 
turies it was used by the Sumerians and the Babylonians and 
the Assyrians and the Persians and all the different races 
which forced their way into the fertile valley. 

The story of Mesopotamia is one of endless warfare and 
conquest. First the Sumerians came from the North. They 
were a white people who had lived in the mountains. They 




A TOWER OF BABEL 



had been accustomed to worship their Gods on the tops of 
hills. After they had entered the plain they constructed arti- 
ficial little hills on top of which they built their altars. They 
did not know how to build stairs and they therefore sur- 
rounded their towers with sloping galleries. Our engineers 
have borrowed this idea, as you may see in our big railroad 
stations where ascending galleries lead from one floor to an- 
other. We may have borrowed other ideas from the Sumeri- 
ans but we do not know it.\ The Sumerians were entirely ab- 



THE SUMERIANS 



35 



sorbed by those races that entered the fertile valley at a later 
date. Their towers however still stand amidst the ruins of 
Mesopotamia. The Jews saw them when they went into exile 
in the land of Babylon and they called them towers of Bab- 
Illi, or towers of Babel. 

In the fortieth century before our era, the Sumerians had 
entered Mesopotamia. They were soon afterwards over- 




NINEVEH 



powered by the Akkadians, one of the many tribes from the 
desert of Arabia who speak a common dialect and who are 
known as the "Semites," because in the olden days people be- 
lieved them to be the direct descendants of Shem, one of the 
three sons of Noah. A thousand years later, the Akkadians 
were forced to submit to the rule of the Amorites, another 
Semitic desert tribe whose great King Hammurabi built him- 
self a magnificent palace in the holy city of Babylon and who 
gave his people a set of laws which made the Babylonian state 



36 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



the best administered empire of the ancient world. Next the 
Hittites, whom you will also meet in the Old Testament, over- 
ran the Fertile Valley and destroyed whatever they could not 
carry away. They in turn were vanquished by the followers 
of the great desert God, Ashur, who called themselves Assyr- 
ians and who made the city of Nineveh the center of a vast 
and terrible empire which conquered all of western Asia and 
Egypt and gathered taxes from countless subject races until 
the end of the seventh century before the birth of Christ when 











■rMM0^m 





THE HOLY CITY OF BABYLON 



THE SUMERIANS 87 

the Chaldeans, also a Semitic tribe, re-established Babylon and 
made that city the most important capital of that day. 
Nebuchadnezzar, the best known of their Kings, encouraged 
the study of science, and our modern knowledge of astronomy 
and mathematics is all based upon certain first principles which 
were discovered by the Chaldeans. In the year 538 B.C. a 
crude tribe of Persian shepherds invaded this old land and 
overthrew the empire of the Chaldeans. Two hundred years 
later, they in turn were overthrown by Alexander the Great, 
who turned the Fertile Valley, the old melting-pot of so many 
Semitic races, into a Greek province. Next came the Romans 
and after the Romans, the Turks, and Mesopotamia, the sec- 
ond centre of the world's civilisation, became a vast wilderness 
where huge mounds of earth told a story of ancient glory. 



MOSES 



THE STORY OF MOSES, THE LEADER OF THE 
JEWISH PEOPLE 

Some time during the twentieth century before our era, 
a small and unimportant tribe of Semitic shepherds had left 
its old home, which was situated in the land of Ur on the mouth 
of the Euphrates, and had tried to find new pastures within 
the domain of the Kings of Babylonia. They had been driven 
away by the royal soldiers and they had moved westward 
looking for a little piece of unoccupied territory where they 
might set up their tents. 

This tribe of shepherds was known as the Hebrews or, as 
we call them, the Jews. They had wandered far and wide, 
and after many years of dreary peregrinations they had been 
given shelter in Egypt. For more than five centuries they 
had dwelt among the Egyptians and when their adopted coun- 
try had been overrun by the Hyksos marauders (as I told 
you in the story of Egypt) they had managed to make them- 
selves useful to the foreign invader and had been left in the 
undisturbed possession of their grazing fields. But after a 
long war of independence the Egyptians had driven the 
Hyksos out of the valley of the Nile and then the Jews had 
come upon evil times for they had been degraded to the rank 
of common slaves and they had been forced to work on the 
royal roads and on the Pyramids. And as the frontiers were 



MOSES 




40 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

guarded by the Egyptian soldiers it had been impossible for 
the Jews to escape. 

After many years of suffering they were saved from their 
miserable fate by a young Jew, called Moses, who for a long 
time had dwelt in the desert and there had learned to appre- 
ciate the simple virtues of his earliest ancestors, who had kept 
away from cities and city-life and had refused to let them- 
selves be corrupted by the ease and the luxury of a foreign 
civilisation. 

Moses decided to bring his people back to a love of the ways 
of the patriarchs. He succeeded in evading the Egyptian 
troops that were sent after him and led his fellow tribesmen 
into the heart of the plain at the foot of Mount Sinai. Dur- 
ing his long and lonely life in the desert, he had learned to 
revere the strength of the great God of the Thunder and the 
Storm, who ruled the high heavens and upon whom the shep- 
herds depended for life and light and breath. This God, one 
of the many divinities who were widely worshipped in western 
Asia, was called Jehovah, and through the teaching of Moses, 
he became the sole Master of the Hebrew race. 

One day, Moses disappeared from the camp of the Jews. 
It was whispered that he had gone away carrying two tablets 
of rough-hewn stone. That afternoon, the top of the mountain 
was lost to sight. The darkness of a terrible storm hid it from 
the eye of man. But when Moses returned, behold! there stood 
engraved upon the tablets the words which Jehovah had spoken 
unto the people of Israel amidst the crash of his thunder and 
the blinding flashes of his lightning. And from that moment, 
Jehovah was recognised by all the Jews as the Highest Master 
of their Fate, the only True God, who had taught them how 
to live holy lives when he bade them to follow the wise lessons 
of his Ten Commandments. 

They followed Moses when he bade them continue their 
journey through the desert. They obeyed him when he told 
them what to eat and drink and what to avoid that they might 
keep well in the hot climate. And finally after many years of 
wandering they came to a land which seemed pleasant and 



MOSES 



41 



prosperous. It was called Palestine, which means the country 
of the "Pilistu" the Philistines, a small tribe of Cretans who 
had settled along the coast after they had been driven away 
from their own island. Unfortunately, the mainland, Pales- 
tine, was already inhabited by another Semitic race, called the 
Canaanites. But the Jews forced their way into the valleys 
and built themselves cities and constructed a mighty temple 



1 




MOSES SEES THE HOLY LAND 



in a town which they named Jerusalem, the Home of Peace. 
As for Moses, he was no longer the leader of his people. He 
had been allowed to see the mountain ridges of Palestine from 
afar. Then he had closed his tired eyes for all time. He had 
worked faithfully and hard to please Jehovah. Not only had 
he guided his brethren out of foreign slavery into the free and 
independent life of a new home but he had also made the Jews 
the first of all nations to worship a single God. 



THE PHCENICIANS WHO GAVE US OUR 
ALPHABET 

The Phoenicians, who were the neighbours of the Jews, 
were a Semitic tribe which at a very early age had settled along 
the shores of the Mediterranean. They had built themselves 
two well-fortified towns, Tyre and Sidon, and within a short 
time they had gained a monopoly of the trade of the western 
seas. Their ships went regularly to Greece and Italy and 




THE PHCENICIAN TRADER 
42 



THE PHOENICIANS 43 

Spain and they even ventured beyond the straits of Gibraltar 
to visit the Seilly islands where they could buy tin. Wherever 
they went, they built themselves small trading stations, which 
they called colonies. Many of these were the origin of mod- 
ern cities, such as Cadiz and Marseilles. 

They bought and sold whatever promised to bring them a 
good profit. They were not troubled by a conscience. If we 
are to believe all their neighbours they did not know what the 
words honesty or integrity meant. They regarded a well-filled 
treasure chest the highest ideal of all good citizens. Indeed 
they were very unpleasant people and did not have a single 
friend. Nevertheless they have rendered all coming genera- 
tions one service of the greatest possible value. They gave 
us our alphabet. 

The Phoenicians had been familiar with the art of writing, 
invented by the Sumerians. But they regarded these pothooks 
as a clumsy waste of time. They were practical business men 
and could not spend hours engraving two or three letters. 
They set to work and invented a new system of writing which 
was greatly superior to the old one. They borrowed a few 
pictures from the Egyptians and they simplified a number of 
the wedge-shaped figures of the Sumerians. They sacrificed 
the pretty looks of the older system for the advantage of speed 
and they reduced the thousands of different images to a short 
and handy alphabet of twenty-two letters. 

In due course of time, this alphabet travelled across the 
^gean Sea and entered Greece. The Greeks added a few 
letters of their own and carried the improved system to Italy. 
The Romans modified the figures somewhat and in turn taught 
them to the wild barbarians of western Europe. Those wild 
barbarians were our own ancestors, and that is the reason why 
this book is written in characters that are of Phoenician origin 
and not in the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians or in the nail- 
script of the Sumerians. 



THE INDO-EUROPEANS 



THE INDO-EUROPEAN PERSIANS CONQUER 

THE SEMITIC AND THE EGYPTIAN 

WORLD 

The world of Egypt and Babylon and Assyria and Phoe- 
nicia had existed almost thirty centuries and the venerable 
races of the Fertile Valley were getting old and tired. Their 
doom was sealed when a new and more energetic race appeared 
upon the horizon. We call this race the Indo-European race, 
because it conquered not only Europe but also made itself the 
ruling class in the country which is now known as British India. 

These Indo-Europeans were white men like the Semites 
but they spoke a different language which is regarded as the 
common ancestor of all European tongues with the exception 
of Hungarian and Finnish and the Basque dialects of North- 
ern Spain. 

When we first hear of them, they had been living along the 
shores of the Caspian Sea for many centuries. But one day 
they had packed their tents and they had wandered forth in 
search of a new home. Some of them had moved into the 
mountains of Central Asia and for many centuries they had 
lived among the peaks which surround the plateau of Iran and 
that is why we call them Aryans. Others had followed the 
setting sun and they had taken possession of the plains of 
Europe as I shall tell you when I give you the story of Greece 
and Rome. 

44 



THE INDO-EUROPEANS 



45 



For the moment we must follow the Aryans. Under the 
leadership of Zarathustra (or Zoroaster) who was their great 
teacher many of them had left their mountain homes to follow 
the swiftly flowing Indus river on its way to the sea. 

Others had preferred to stay among the hills of western 
Asia and there they had founded the half -independent com- 
munities of the Medes and the Persians, two peoples whose 




THE STORY OF A WORD 

names we have copied from the old Greek history-books. In 
the seventh century before the birth of Christ, the Medes had 
established a kingdom of their own called Media, but this 
perished when Cyrus, the chief of a clan known as the Anshan, 
made himself king of all the Persian tribes and started upon 
a career of conquest which soon made him and his children the 
undisputed masters of the whole of western Asia and of Egypt. 
Indeed, with such energy did these Indo-European Persians 
push their triumphant campaigns in the west that they soon 



46 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 




THE INDO-EUROPEANS 47 

found themselves in serious difficulties with certain other Indo- 
European tribes which centuries before had moved into Europe 
and had taken possession of the Greek peninsula and the islands 
of the iEgean Sea. 

These difficulties led to the three famous wars between 
Greece and Persia during which King Darius and King 
Xerxes of Persia invaded the northern part of the peninsula. 
They ravaged the lands of the Greeks and tried very hard to 
get a foothold upon the European continent. 

But in this they did not succeed. The navy of Athens 
proved unconquerable. By cutting off the lines of supplies 
of the Persian armies, the Greek sailors invariably forced the 
Asiatic rulers to return to their base. 

It was the lirst encounter between Asia, the ancient 
teacher, and Europe, the young and eager pupil. A great 
many of the other chapters of this book will tell you how the 
struggle between east and west has continued until this very 
day. 



THE PEOPLE OF THE ^GEAN SEA CARRIED 

THE CIVILISATION OF OLD ASIA INTO 

THE WILDERNESS OF EUROPE 



When Heinrich Schlie- 
mann was a little boy his 
father told him the story of 
Troy. He liked that story 
better than anything else he 
had ever heard and he made 
up his mind, that as soon as he 
was big enough to leave home, 
he would travel to Greece and 
"find Troy." That he was the 
son of a poor country parson 
in a Mecklenburg village did 
not bother him. He knew 
that he would need money but 
he decided to gather a fortune first and do the digging after- 
wards. As a matter of fact, he managed to get a large fortune 
within a very short time, and as soon as he had enough money to 
equip an expedition, he went to the northwest corner of Asia 
Minor, where he supposed that Troy had been situated. 

In that particular nook of old Asia Minor, stood a high 
mound covered with grainfields. According to tradition it had 
been the home of Priamus the king of Troy. Schliemann, 

48 




THE TROJAN HORSE 



THE tEGEAN sea 



49 



7»ts /J T*/B CtTy 



AUb THIS fS 
He PooAf^ 




SCHLIEMANN DIGS FOR TROY 

whose enthusiasm was somewhat greater than his knowledge, 
wasted no time in preliminary explorations. At once he began 
to dig. And he dug with such zeal and such speed that his 
trench went straight through the heart of the city for which he 
was looking and carried him to the ruins of another buried 
town which was at least a thousand years older than the Troy 
of which Homer had written. Then something very interest- 
ing occurred. If Schliemann had found a few polished stone 
hammers and perhaps a few pieces of crude pottery, no one 
would have been surprised. Instead of discovering such ob- 
jects, which people had generally associated with the prehis- 
toric men who had lived in these regions before the coming of 
the Greeks, Schliemann found beautiful statuettes and very 
costly jewelry and ornamented vases of a pattern that was 
unknown to the Greeks. He ventured the suggestion that 



50 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



fully ten centuries before the great Trojan war, the coast of 
the iEgean had been inhabited by a mysterious race of men 
who in many ways had been the superiors of the wild Greek 
tribes who had invaded their country and had destroyed their 
civilisation or absorbed it until it had lost all trace of origi- 
nality. And this proved to be the case. In the late seventies of 




MYCEN^ IN ARGOLIS 



the last century, Schliemann visited the ruins of Mycenae, ruins 
which were so old that Roman guide-books marvelled at their 
antiquity. There again, beneath the flat slabs of stone of a 
small round enclosure, Schliemann stumbled upon a wonderful 
treasure-trove, which had been left behind by those mysterious 
people who had covered the Greek coast with their cities and 
who had built walls, so big and so heavy and so strong, that 
the Greeks called them the work of the Titans, those god-like 



THE JEGEAN SEA 



51 



giants who in very olden days had used to play ball ^vith 
mountain peaks. 

A very careful study of these many relics has done away 
with some of the romantic features of the story. The makers 
of these early works of art and the builders of these strong 
fortresses were no sorcerers, but simple sailors and traders. 
They had lived in Crete, and on the many small islands of the 




THE ^GEAN SEA 



^gean Sea. They had been hardy mariners and they had 
turned the ^gean into a center of commerce for the exchange 
of goods between the highly civilised east and the slowly de- 
veloping wilderness of the European mainland. 

For more than a thousand years they had maintained an 
island empire which had developed a very high form of art. 
Indeed their most important city, Cnossus, on the northern 
coast of Crete, had been entirely modern in its insistence upon 
hygiene and comfort. The palace had been properly drained 
and the houses had been provided with stoves and the Cnossians 



52 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



w 




/H<*U4) 7 OCyr^h 5 



/ 






^^/3 






oj 




oJ^^^ 














J5*>»7»5 







/C^l^fA 













^/i<)2>os 







THE ISLAND-BRIDGES BETWEEN ASIA AND EUROPE 



THE tEGEAN sea 53 

had been the first people to make a daily use of the hitherto 
unknown bathtub. The palace of their King had been famous 
for its winding staircases and its large banqueting hall. The 
cellars underneath this palace, where the wine and the grain 
and the olive-oil were stored, had been so vast and had so 
greatly impressed the first Greek visitors, that they had given 
rise to the story of the "labyrinth," the name which we give 
to a structure with so many complicated passages that it is 
almost impossible to find our way out, once the front door has 
closed upon our frightened selves. 

But what finally became of this great ^gean Empire and 
what caused its sudden downfall, that I can not tell. 

The Cretans were familiar with the art of writing, but no 
one has yet been able to decipher their inscriptions. Their 
history therefore is unknown to us. We have to reconstruct 
the record of their adventures from the ruins which the 
^geans have left behind. These ruins make it clear that the 
^gean world was suddenly conquered by a less civilised race 
which had recently come from the plains of northern Europe. 
Unless we are very much mistaken, the savages who were 
responsible for the destruction of the Cretan and the ^gean 
civilisation were none other than certain tribes of wandering 
shepherds who had just taken possession of the rocky penin- 
sula between the Adriatic and the iEgean seas and who are 
known to us as Greeks. 



MEANWHILE THE INDO-EUROPEAN TRIBE 

OF THE HELLENES WAS TAKING 

POSSESSION OF GREECE 

The Pyramids were a thousand years old and were begin- 
ning to show the first signs of decay, and Hammurabi, the 
wise king of Babylon, had been dead and buried several cen- 
turies, when a small tribe of shepherds left their homes along 




AN ^GEAN CITY ON THE GREEK MAINLAND 
54 



THE GREEKS 



55 




THE ACH^ANS TAKE AN ^GEAN CITY 



the banks of the River Danube and wandered southward in 
search of fresh pastures. They called themselves Hellenes, 
after Hellen, the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha. According 
to the old myths these were the only two human beings who 
had escaped the great flood, which countless years before had 
destroyed all the people of the world, when they had grown 
so wicked that they disgusted Zeus, the mighty God, who lived 
on Mount Olympus. 

Of these early Hellenes we know nothing. Thucydides, 
the historian of the fall of Athens, describing his earliest an- 
cestors, said that they "did not amount to very much," and 
this was probably true. They were very ill-mannered. They 
lived like pigs and threw the bodies of their enemies to the wild 
dogs who guarded their sheep. They had very little respect 
for other people's rights, and they killed the natives of the 
Greek peninsula (who were called the Pelasgians) and stole 
their farms and took their cattle and made their wives and 
daughters slaves and wrote endless songs praising the courage 
of the clan of the Achaeans, who had led the Hellenic advance- 
guard into the mountains of Thessaly and the Peloponessus. 



56 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

But here and there, on the tops of high rocks, they saw 
the castles of the ^geans and those they did not attack for 
they feared the metal swords and the spears of the ^^Ggean 
soldiers and knew that they could not hope to defeat them with 
their clumsy stone axes. 

For many centuries they continued to wander from valley 
to valley and from mountain side to mountain side. Then the 
whole of the land had been occupied and the migration had 
come to an end. 

That moment was the beginning of Greek civilisation. The 
Greek farmer, living within sight of the Mgean colonies, 
was finally driven by curiosity to visit his haughty neighbours. 
He discovered that he could learn many useful things from 
the men who dwelt behind the high stone walls of Mycenae and 
Tiryns. 

He was a clever pupil. Within a short time he mastered 
the art of handling those strange iron weapons which the 
^geans had brought from Babylon and from Thebes. He 
came to understand the mysteries of navigation. He began 
to build little boats for his own use. 

And when he had learned everything the ^geans could 




y>*^;i|jyft*»^mt<« <jj r ii||| HMrf ^ 



t(Ut 




THE FALL OF CNOSSUS 



THE GREEKS 57 

teach him he turned upon his teachers and drove them back 
to their islands. Soon afterwards he ventured forth upon the 
sea and conquered all the cities of the .^gean. Finally in the 
fifteenth century before our era he plundered and ravaged 
Cnossus and ten centuries after their first appearance upon 
the scene the Hellenes were the undisputed rulers of Greece, 
of the 2Eigean and of the coastal regions of Asia Minor. Troy, 
the last great commercial stronghold of the older civilisation, 
was destroyed in the eleventh century B.C. European history 
was to begin in all seriousness. 



THE GREEK CITIES 



THE GREEK CITIES THAT WERE REALLY 

STATES 

We modern people love the sound of the word "big." We 
pride ourselves upon the fact that we belong to the "biggest" 
country in the world and possess the "biggest" navy and grow 
the "biggest" oranges and potatoes, and we love to live in 
cities of "millions" of inhabitants and when we are dead we 
are buried in the "biggest cemetery of the whole state." 

A citizen of ancient Greece, could he have heard us talk, 
would not have known what we meant. "Moderation in all 
things" was the ideal of his life and mere bulk did not impress 
him at all. And this love of moderation was not merely a 
hollow phrase used upon special occasions: it influenced the 
life of the Greeks from the day of their birth to the hour of 
their death. It was part of their literature and it made them 
build small but perfect temples. It found expression in the 
clothes which the men wore and in the rings and the bracelets 
of their wives. It followed the crowds that went to the thea- 
tre and made them hoot down any playwright who dared to 
sin against the iron law of good taste or good sense. 

The Greeks even insisted upon this quality in their poli- 
ticians and in their most popular athletes. When a powerful 
runner came to Sparta and boasted that he could stand longer 
on one foot than any other man in Hellas the people drove him 
from the city because he prided himself upon an accomplish- 

58 



THE GREEK CITIES 59 

ment at which he could be beaten by any common goose, 
"That is all very well," you will say, "and no doubt it is a 
great virtue to care so much for moderation and perfection, 
but why should the Greeks have been the only people to de- 
velop this quality in olden times?" For an answer I shall 
point to the way in which the Greeks lived. 

The people of Egypt or Mesopotamia had been the "sub- 
jects" of a mysterious Supreme Ruler who lived miles and 




MOUNT OLYMPUS WHERE THE GODS LIVED 

miles away in a dark palace and who was rarely seen by the 
masses of the population. The Greeks on the other hand, 
were "free citizens" of a hundred independent little "cities" 
the largest of which counted fewer inhabitants than a large 
modern village. When a peasant who lived in Ur said that he 
was a Babylonian he meant that he was one of millions of 
other people who paid tribute to the king who at that particular 
moment happened to be master of western Asia. But when 
a Greek said proudly that he was an Athenian or a Theban 
he spoke of a small town, which was both his home and his 



60 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

country and which recognised no master but the will of the 
\i people in the market-place. 

To the Greek, his fatherland was the place where he was 
born; where he had spent his earliest years playing hide and 
seek amidst the forbidden rocks of the Acropolis ; where he had 
grown into manhood with a thousand other boys and girls, 
whose nicknames were as familiar to him as those of your own 
schoolmates. His Fatherland was the holy soil where his father 
and mother lay buried. It was the small house within the high 
city-walls where his wife and children lived in safety. It was 
a complete world which covered no more than four or five 
acres of rocky land. Don't you see how these surroundings 
must have influenced a man in everything he did and said and 
thought? The people of Babylon and Assyria and Egypt 
had been part of a vast mob. They had been lost in the multi- 
tude. The Greek on the other hand had never lost touch with 
i his immediate surroundings. He never ceased to be part of a 
little town where everybody knew every one else. He felt 
that his intelligent neighbours were watching him. Whatever 
he did, whether he wrote plays or made statues out of marble 
or composed songs, he remembered that his efforts were going 
to be judged by all the free-born citizens of his home-town who 
knew about such things. This knowledge forced him to strive 
after perfection, and perfection, as he had been taught from 
childhood, was not possible without moderation. 

In this hard school, the Greeks learned to excel in many 
things. They created new forms of government and new forms 
of literature and new ideals in art which we have never been 
able to surpass. They performed these miracles in little vil- 
lages that covered less ground than four or five modern city 
blocks. 

And look, what finally happened! 

In the fourth century before our era, Alexander of Mace- 
donia conquered the world. As soon as he had done with 
fighting, Alexander decided that he must bestow the benefits 
of the true Greek genius upon all mankind. He took it away 
from the little cities and the little villages and tried to make 



THE GREEK CITIES 61 

(it blossom and bear fruit amidst the vast royal residences of 
his newly acquired Empire. But the Greeks, removed from 
I the familiar sight of their own temples, removed from the well- 
i known sounds and smells of their own crooked streets, at once 
\ lost the cheerful joy and the marvellous sense of moderation 
' which had inspired the work of their hands and brains while 
i they laboured for the glory of their old city-states. They be- 
|came cheap artisans, content with second-rate work. The day 
i the little city-states of old Hellas lost their independence and 
'; were forced to become part of a big nation, the old Greek spirit 
died. And it has been dead ever since. 



GREEK SELF-GOVERNMENT 



THE GREEKS WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE TO 

TRY THE DIFFICULT EXPERIMENT OF 

SELF-GOVERNMENT 

In the beginning, all the Greeks had been equally rich and 
equally poor. Every man had owned a certain number of 
cows and sheep. His mud-hut had been his castle. He had 
been free to come and go as he wished. Whenever it was nec- 
essary to discuss matters of public importance, all the citizens 
had gathered in the market-place. One of the older men of the 
village was elected chairman and it was his duty to see that 
everybody had a chance to express his views. In case of war, 
a particularly energetic and self-confident villager was chosen 
commander-in-chief, but the same people who had voluntarily 
given this man the right to be their leader, claimed an equal 
right to deprive him of his job, once the danger had been 
averted. 

But gradually the village had grown into a city. Some 
people had worked hard and others had been lazy. A few 
had been unlucky and still others had been just plain dishon- 
est in dealing with their neighbours and had gathered wealth. 
As a result, the city no longer consisted of a number of men 
who were equally well-off. On the contrary it was inhabited 
by a small class of very rich people and a large class of very 
poor ones. 

There had been another change. The old commander-in- 

62 



GREEK SELF-GOVERNMENT 



63 



chief who had been willingly recognised as "headman" or 
"King" because he knew how to lead his men to victory, had 
disappeared from the scene. His place had been taken by the 
nobles — a class of rich people who during the course of time 
had got hold of an undue share of the farms and estates. 

These nobles enjoyed many advantages over the common 
crowd of freemen. They were able to buy the best weapons 
which were to be found on the market of the eastern Mediter- 
ranean. They had much spare time in which they could prac- 




A GREEK CITY-STATE 



tise the art of fighting. They lived in strongly built houses 
and they could hire soldiers to fight for them. They were con- 
stantly quarrelling among each other to decide who should 
rule the city. The victorious nobleman then assumed a sort of 
Kingship over all his neighbours and governed the town until 
he in turn was killed or driven away by still another ambitious 
nobleman. 

Such a King, by the grace of his soldiers, was called a 
"Tyrant" and during the seventh and sixth centuries before 
our era every Greek city was for a time ruled by such Tyrants, 
many of whom, by the way, happened to be exceedingly capa- 



64> THE STORY OF MANKIND 

ble men. But in the long run, this state of affairs became un- 
bearable. Then attempts were made to bring about reforms 
and out of these reforms grew the first democratic government 
of which the world has a record. 

It was early in the seventh century that the people of 
Athens decided to do some housecleaning and give the large 
number of freemen once more a voice in the government as 
they were supposed to have had in the days of their Achaean 
ancestors. They asked a man by the name of Draco to pro- 
vide them with a set of laws that would protect the poor against 
the aggressions of the rich. Draco set to work. Unfortu- 
nately he was a professional lawyer and very much out of touch 
with ordinary life. In his eyes a crime was a crime and when 
he had finished his code, the people of Athens discovered that 
these Draconian laws were so severe that they could not pos- 
sibly be put into effect. There would not have been rope 
enough to hang all the criminals under their new system of 
jurisprudence which made the stealing of an apple a capital 
offence. 

The Athenians looked about for a more humane reformer. 
At last they found some one who could do that sort of thing 
better than anybody else. His name was Solon. He belonged 
to a noble family and he had travelled all over the world and 
had studied the forms of government of many other countries. 
After a careful study of the subject, Solon gave Athens a set 
of laws which bore testimony to that wonderful principle of 
moderation which was part of the Greek character. He tried 
to improve the condition of the peasant without however de- 
stroying the prosperity of the nobles who were (or rather who 
could be) of such great service to the state as soldiers. To pro- 
tect the poorer classes against abuse on the part of the judges 
(who were always elected from the class of the nobles because 
they received no salary) Solon made a provision whereby a 
citizen with a grievance had the right to state his case before 
a jury of thirty of his fellow Athenians. 

Most important of all, Solon forced the average freeman 
to take a direct and personal interest in the affairs of the city. 



GREEK SELF-GOVERNMENT 65 

No longer could he stay at home and say "oh, I am too busy 
today" or "it is raining and I had better stay indoors." He 
was expected to do his share ; to be at the meeting of the town 
council ; and carry part of the responsibility for the safety and 
the prosperity of the state. 

This government by the "demos," the people, was often far 
from successful. There was too much idle talk. There were 
too many hateful and spiteful scenes between rivals for official 
honor. But it taught the Greek people to be independent and 
to rely upon themselves for their salvation and that was a very 
good thing. 



HOW THE GREEKS LIVED 

But how, you will ask, did the ancient Greeks have time 
to look after their families and their business if they were 
forever running to the market-place to discuss affairs of state? 
In this chapter I shall tell you. 

In all matters of government, the Greek democracy recog- 
nised only one class of citizens — ^the freemen. Every Greek 
city was composed of a small number of free bom citizens, a 
large number of slaves and a sprinkling of foreigners. 

At rare intervals (usually during a war, when men were 
needed for the army) the Greeks showed themselves willing to 
confer the rights of citizenship upon the "barbarians" as they 
called the foreigners. But this was an exception. Citizenship 
was a matter of birth. You were an Athenian because your 
father and your grandfather had been Athenians before you. 
But however great your merits as a trader or a soldier, if you 
were born of non-Athenian parents, you remained a "for- 
eigner" until the end of time. 

The Greek city, therefore, whenever it was not ruled by a 
king or a tyrant, was run by and for the freemen, and this 
would not have been possible without a large army of slaves 
who outnumbered the free citizens at the rate of six or five 
to one and who performed those tasks to which we modern 
people must devote most of our time and energy if we wish to 
provide for our families and pay the rent of our apartments. 

66 



GREEK LIFE 



67 



The slaves did all the cooking and baking and candlestick 
making of the entire city. They were the tailors and the car- 
penters and the jewelers and the school-teachers and the book- 
keepers and they tended the store and looked after the factory 
while the master went to the public meeting to discuss ques- 
tions of war and peace or visited the theatre to see the latest 
play of ^schylus or hear a discussion of the revolutionary ideas 




GREEK SOCIETY 



of Euripides, who had dared to express certain doubts upon 
the omnipotence of the great god Zeus. 

Indeed, ancient Athens resembled a modern club. All the 
freeborn citizens were hereditary members and all the slaves 
were hereditary servants, and waited upon the needs of their 
masters, and it was very pleasant to be a member of the or- 
ganisation. 

But when we talk about slaves, we do not mean the sort of 



68 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

people about whom you have read in the pages of "Uncle 
Tom's Cabin." It is true that the position of those slaves who 
tilled the fields was a very unpleasant one, but the average 
freeman who had come down in the world and who had been 
obliged to hire himself out as a farm hand led just as miser- 
able a life. In the cities, furthermore, many of the slaves were 
more prosperous than the poorer classes of the freemen. For 
the Greeks, who loved moderation in all things, did not like to 
treat their slaves after the fashion which afterward was so 
common in Rome, where a slave had as few rights as an engine 
in a modern factory and could be thrown to the wild animals 
upon the smallest pretext. 

The Greeks accepted slavery as a necessary institution, 
without which no city could possibly become the home of a truly 
civilised people. 

The slaves also took care of those tasks which nowadays are 
performed by the business men and the professional men. As 
for those household duties which take up so much of the time 
of your mother and which worry your father when he comes 
home from his office, the Greeks, who understood the value of 
leisure, had reduced such duties to the smallest possible mini- 
mum by living amidst surroundings of extreme simplicity. 

To begin with, their homes were very plain. Even the rich 
nobles spent their lives in a sort of adobe barn, which lacked 
all the comforts which a modern workman expects as his natu- 
ral right. A Greek home consisted of four walls and a roof. 
There was a door which led into the street but there were no 
windows. The kitchen, the living rooms and the sleeping quar- 
ters were built around an open courtyard in which there was a 
small fountain, or a statue and a few plants to make it look 
bright. Within this courtyard the family lived when it did not 
rain or when it was not too cold. In one corner of the yard the 
cook (who was a slave) prepared the meal and in another 
corner, the teacher (who was also a slave) taught the children 
the alpha beta gamma and the tables of multiplication and in 
still another corner the lady of the house, who rarely left her 




THE TEMPLE 



GREEK LIFE 69 

domain (since it was not considered good form for a married 
woman to be seen on the street too often) was repairing her 
husband's coat with her seamstresses (who were slaves,) and 
in the little office, right off the door, the master was inspecting 
the accounts which the overseer of his farm (who was a slave) 
had just brought to him. 

When dinner was ready the family came together but the 
meal was a verj simple one and did not take much time. The 
Greeks seem to have regarded eating as an unavoidable evil 
and not a pastime, which kills many dreary hours and eventu- 
ally kills many dreary people. They lived on bread and on 
wine, with a little meat and some green vegetables. They 
drank water only when nothing else was available because 
they did not think it very healthy. They loved to call on each 
other for dinner, but our idea of a festive meal, where every- 
body is supposed to eat much more than is good for him, would 
have disgusted them. They came together at the table for 
the purpose of a good talk and a good glass of wine and water, 
but as they were moderate people they despised those who 
drank too much. 

The same simplicity which prevailed in the dining room 
also dominated their choice of clothes. They liked to be clean 
and well groomed, to have their hair and beards neatly cut, 
to feel their bodies strong with the exercise and the swimming 
of the gymnasium, but they never followed the Asiatic fashion 
which prescribed loud colours and strange patterns. They 
wore a long white coat and they managed to look as smart as 
a modern Italian officer in his long blue cape. 

They loved to see their wives wear ornaments but they 
thought it very vulgar to display their wealth (or their wives) 
in public and whenever the women left their home they were as 
inconspicuous as possible. 

In short, the story of Greek life is a story not only of mod- 
eration but also of simphcity. "Things," chairs and tables and 
books and houses and carriages, are apt to take up a great 
deal of their owner's time. In the end they invariably make 



70 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

him their slave and his hours are spent looking after their 
wants, keeping them polished and brushed and painted. The 
Greeks, before everj'ihing else, wanted to be "free," both in 
mind and in body. That they might maintain their liberty, and 
be truly free in spirit, they reduced their daily needs to the 
lowest possible point. 



THE GREEK THEATRE 



THE ORIGINS OF THE THEATRE, THE FIRST 
FORM OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENT 

At a very early stage of their history the Greeks had be- 
gun to collect the poems, which had been written in honor of 
their brave ancestors who had driven the Pelasgians out of 
Hellas and had destroyed the power of Troy. These poems were 
recited in public and everybody came to listen to them. But 
the theatre, the form of entertainment which has become almost 
a necessary part of our own lives, did not grow out of these 
recited heroic tales. It had such a curious origin that I must 
tell you something about it in a separate chapter. 

The Greeks had always been fond of parades. Every 
year they held solemn processions in honor of Dionysos the 
God of the wine. As everybody in Greece drank wine (the 
Greeks thought water only useful for the purpose of swimming 
and sailing) this particular Divinity was as popular as a God 
of the Soda-Fountain would be in our own land. 

And because the Wine-God was supposed to live in the 
vineyards, amidst a merry mob of Satyrs (strange creatures 
who were half man and half goat), the crowd that joined the 
procession used to wear goat-skins and to hee-haw like real 
billy-goats. The Greek word for ffoat is "tragos" and the 
Greek word for singer is "oidos." The singer who meh-mehed 
like a goat therefore was called a "tragos-oidos" or goat singer, 
and it is this strange name which developed into the modern 

71 



72 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

word "Tragedy," which means in the theatrical sense a piece 
with an unhappy ending, just as Comedy {which really means 
the singing of something "comos" or gay) is the name given 
to a play which ends happily. 

But how, you will ask, did this noisy chorus of masquer- 
aders, stamping around like wild goats, ever develop into the 
noble tragedies which have filled the theatres of the world for 
almost two thousand years? 

The connecting link between the goat-singer and Hamlet is 
really very simple as I shall show you in a moment. 

The singing chorus was very amusing in the beginning and 
attracted large crowds of spectators who stood along the side 
of the road and laughed. But soon this business of hee-hawing 
grew tiresome and the Greeks thought dullness an evil only 
comparable to ughness or sickness. They asked for some- 
thing more entertaining. Then an inventive young poet from 
the village of Icaria in Attica hit upon a new idea which proved 
a tremendous success. He made one of the members of the 
goat-chorus step forward and engage in conversation with the 
leader of the musicians who marched at the head of the parade 
playing upon their pipes of Pan. This individual was al- 
lowed to step out of line. He waved his arms and gesticulated 
while he spoke (that is to say he "acted" while the others merely 
stood by and sang) and he asked a lot of questions, which the 
bandmaster answered according to the roll of papyrus upon 
which the poet had written down these answers before the 
show began. 

This rough and ready conversation — the dialogue — which 
told the story of Dionysos or one of the other Gods, became 
at once popular with the crowd. Henceforth every Diony- 
sian procession had an "acted scene" and very soon the "acting" 
was considered more important than the procession and the 
meh-mehing. 

i^Eschylus, the most successful of all "tragedians" who wrote 
no less than eighty plays during his long life (from 526 to 4i55) 
made a bold step forward when he introduced two "actors" 
instead of one. A generation later Sophocles increased the 



THE GREEK THEATRE 73 

number of actors to three. When Euripides began to write 
his terrible tragedies in the middle of the fifth century, B.C., 
he was allowed as many actors as he liked and when Aristo- 
phanes wrote those famous comedies in which he poked fun at 
everybody and everything, including the Gods of Mount Olym^ 
pus, the chorus had been reduced to the role of mere by- 
standers who were lined up behind the principal performers 
and who sang "this is a terrible world" while the hero in the 
foreground committed a crime against the will of the Gods. 

This new form of dramatic entertainment demanded a 
proper setting, and soon every Greek city owned a theatre, cut 
out of the rock of a nearby hill. The spectators sat upon 
wooden benches and faced a wide circle (our present orches- 
tra where you pay three dollars and thirty cents for a seat). 
Upon this half -circle, which was the stage, the actors and the 
chorus took their stand. Behind them there was a tent where 
they made up with large clay masks which hid their faces and 
which showed the spectators whether the actors were supposed 
to be happy and smiling or unhappy and weeping. The Greek 
word for tent is "skene" and that is the reason why we talk 
of the "scenery" of the stage. 

When once the tragedy had become part of Greek life, the 
people took it very seriously and never went to the theatre to 
give their minds a vacation. A new play became as impor- 
tant an event as an election and a successful playwright was 
received with greater honors than those bestowed upon a gen- 
eral who had just returned from a famous victory. 



HOW THE GREEKS DEFENDED EUROPE 
AGAINST ASIATIC INVASION AND DROVE 
THE PERSIANS BACK ACROSS THE ^GEAN 
SEA 

The Greeks had learned the art of trading from the 
iEgeans who had been the pupils of the Phoenicians. They 
had founded colonies after the Phoenician pattern. They had 
even improved upon the Phoenician methods by a more general 
use of money in dealing with foreign customers. In the sixth 
century before our era they had established themselves firmly 
along the coast of Asia Minor and they were taking away 
trade from the Phoenicians at a fast rate. This the Phoeni- 
cians of course did not like but they were not strong enough to 
risk a war with their Greek competitors. They sat and waited 
nor did they wait in vain. 

In a former chapter, I have told you how a humble tribe 
of Persian shepherds had suddenly gone upon the warpath and 
had conquered the greater part of western Asia. The Per- 
sians were too civilised to plunder their new subjects. They 
contented themselves with a yearly tribute. When they 
reached the coast of Asia Minor they insisted that the Greek 
colonies of Lydia recognize the Persian Kings as their over- 
Lords and pay them a stipulated tax. The Greek colonies 
objected. The Persians insisted. Then the Greek colonies 

74 



THE PERSIAN WARS 76 

appealed to the home-country and the stage was set for a 
quarrel. 

For if the truth be told, the Persian Kings regarded the 
Greek city-states as very dangerous political institutions and 
bad examples for all other people who were supposed to be the 
patient slaves of the mighty Persian Kings. 

Of course, the Greeks enjoyed a certain degree of safety be- 
cause their country lay hidden beyond the deep waters of the 




THE PERSIAN FLEET IS DESTROYED NEAR MOUNT ATHOS 

.^gean. But here their old enemies, the Phoenicians, stepped 
forward with offers of help and advice to the Persians. If the 
Persian King would provide the soldiers, the Phoenicians would 
guarantee to deliver the necessary ships to carry them to 
Europe. It was the year 492 before the birth of Christ, and 
Asia made ready to destroy the rising power of Europe. 

As a final warning the King of Persia sent messengers 
to the Greeks asking for "earth and water" as a token of their 
submission. The Greeks promptly threw the messengers into 
the nearest well where they would find both "earth and water" 
in large abundance and thereafter of course peace was im- 
possible. 



76 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



But the Gods of High Olympus watched over their chil- 
dren and when the Phoenician fleet carrying the Persian troops 
was near Mount Athos, the Storm-God blew his cheeks until 
he almost burst the veins of his brow, and the fleet was de- 
stroyed by a terrible hurricane and the Persians were all 
drowned. 

Two years later they returned. This time they sailed 
straight across the ^gean Sea and landed near the village of 




C?AitA THOA/ 



THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 

Marathon. As soon as the Athenians heard this they sent 
their army of ten thousand men to guard the hills that sur- 
rounded the Marathonian plain. At the same time they des- 
patched a fast runner to Sparta to ask for help. But Sparta 
was envious of the fame of Athens and refused to come to her 
assistance. The other Greek cities followed her example with 
the exception of tiny Plataea which sent a thousand men. On 
the twelfth of September of the year 490, Miltiades, the Athen- 
ian conmiander, threw this little army against the hordes of the 



i 



THE PERSIAN WARS 77 

Persians. The Greeks broke through the Persian barrage of 
arrows and their spears caused terrible havoc among the disor- 
ganised Asiatic troops who had never been called upon to re- 
sist such an enemy. 

That night the people of Athens watched the sky grow 
red with the flames of burning ships. Anxiously they waited 
for news. At last a little cloud of dust appeared upon the 
road that led to the North. It was Pheidippides, the runner. 
He stumbled and gasped for his end was near. Only a few 
daj^s before had he returned from his errand to Sparta. He 
had hastened to join Miltiades. That morning he had jbaken 
part in the attack and later he had volunteered to carry the 
news of victory to his beloved city. The people saw him fall 
and they rushed forward to support him. "We have won," 
he whispered and then he died, a glorious death which made him 
envied of all men. 

As for the Persians, they tried, after this defeat, to land 
near Athens but they found the coast guarded and disap- 
peared, and once more the land of Hellas was at peace. 

Eight years they waited and during this time the Greeks 
were not idle. They knew that a final attack was to be expected 
but they did not agi-ee upon the best way to avert the danger. 
Some people wanted to increase the army. Others said that 
a strong fleet was necessary for success. The two parties led by 
Aristides (for the army) and Themistocles (the leader of the 
bigger-navy men) fought each other bitterly and nothing was 
done until Aristides was exiled. Then Themistocles had his 
chance and he built all the ships he could and turned the Piraeus 
into a strong naval base. 

In the year 481 B.C. a tremendous Persian army appeared 
in Thessaly, a province of northern Greece. In this hour of 
danger, Sparta, the great military city of Greece, was elected 
commander-in-chief. But the Spartans cared little what hap- 
pened to northern Greece provided their own country was not 
invaded. They neglected to fortify the passes that led into 
Greece. 



78 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



A small detachment of Spar- 
tans under Leonidas had been 
told to guard the narrow road be- 
tween the high mountains and 
the sea which connected Thessaly 
with the southern provinces. 
Leonidas obeyed his orders. He 
fought and held the pass with 
unequalled bravery. But a 
traitor by the name of Ephialtes 
who knew the little byways of 
Malis guided a regiment of Per- 
sians through the hills and made 
it possible for them to attack 
Leonidas in the rear. Near the 
Warm Wells — the Thermopylae 
— a terrible battle was fought. 

When night came Leonidas and his faithful soldiers lay dead 

under the corpses of their enemies. 

But the pass had been lost and the greater part of Greece 

fell into the hands of the Persians. They marched upon 

Athens, threw the garrison from the rocks of the Acropolis and 




THERMOPYLAE 




THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE 



THE PERSIAN WARS 



79 



burned the city. The people fled to the Island of Salamis. All 
seemed lost. But on the 20th of September of the year 480 
Themistocles forced the Persian fleet to give battle within the 
narrow straits which separated the Island of Salamis from the 
mainland and within a few hours he destroyed three quarters 
of the Persian ships. 

In this way the victory of Thermopylae came to naught. 




THE PERSIANS BURN ATHENS 



Xerxes was forced to retire. The next year, so he decreed, 
would bring a final decision. He took his troops to Thessaly 
and there he waited for spring. 

But this time the Spartans understood the seriousness of 
the hour. They left the safe shelter of the wall which they had 
built across the isthmus of Corinth and under the leadership 
of Pausanias they marched against Mardonius the Persian 
general. The united Greeks ( some one hundred thousand men 
from a dozen different cities) attacked the three hundred thou- 



80 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

sand men of the enemy near Plataea. Once more the heavy 
Greek infantry broke through the Persian barrage of arrows. 
The Persians were defeated, as they had been at Marathon, and 
this time they left for good. By a strange coincidence^ the 
same day that the Greek armies won their victory near Plataea, 
the Athenian ships destroyed the enemy's fleet near Cape My- 
cale in Asia Minor. 

Thus did the first encounter between Asia and Europe end. 
Athens had covered herself with glory and Sparta had fought 
bravely and well. If these two cities had been able to come to 
an agreement, if they had been willing to forget their little 
jealousies, they might have become the leaders of a strong and 
united Hellas. 

But alas, they allowed the hour of victory and enthusiasm 
to slip by, and the same opportunity never returned. 



ATHENS vs, SPARTA 



HOW ATHENS AND SPARTA FOUGHT A LONG 
AND DISASTROUS WAR FOR THE LEADER- 
SHIP OF GREECE 

Athens and Sparta were both Greek cities and their people 
spoke a common language. In every other respect they were 
different. "J" Athens rose high from the plain. It was a city 
exposed to the fresh breezes from the sea, willing to look at 
the world with the eyes of a happy child. Sparta, on the other 
hand, was built at the bottom of a deep valley, and used the 
surrounding mountains as a barrier against foreign thought. 
Athens was a city of busy trade. Sparta was an armed camp 
where people were soldiers for the sake of being soldiers. The 
people of Athens loved to sit in the sun and discuss poetry or 
listen to the wise words of a philosopher. The Spartans, on the 
other hand, never wrote a single line that was considered litera- 
ture, but they knew how to fight, they liked to fight, and they 
sacrificed all human emotions to their ideal of military pre- 
paredness. 

No wonder that these sombre Spartans viewed the success 
of Athens with malicious hate. The energy which the defence of 
the common home had developed in Athens was now used for 
purposes of a more peaceful nature. The Acropolis was re- 
built and was made into a marble shrine to the Goddess Athena. 
Pericles, the leader of the Athenian democracy, sent far and 
wide to find famous sculptors and painters and scientists^^to 

81 



82 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

make the city more beautiful and the young Athenians more 
worthy of their home. At the same time he kept a watchful 
eye on Sparta and built high walls which connected Athens 
with the sea and made her the strongest fortress of that day. 

An insignificant quarrel between two little Greek cities led 
to the final conflict. For thirty years the war between Athens 
and Sparta continued. It ended in a terrible disaster for 
Athens. 

During the third year of the war the plague had entered 
the city. More than half of the people and Pericles, the great 
leader, had been killed. The plague was followed by a period 
of bad and untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young fel- 
low by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor of the 
popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan 
colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and 
everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street 
brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him 
was a bungler. First he lost his ships and then he lost his 
army, and the few surviving Athenians were thrown into the 
stone-quarries of Syracuse, where they died from hunger and 
thirst. 

The expedition had killed all the young men of Athens. 
The city was doomed. After a long siege the town surrendered 
in April of the year 404. The high walls were demolished. 
The navy was taken away by the Spartans. Athens ceased to 
exist as the center of the great colonial empire which it had 
conquered during the days of its prosperity. But that won- 
derful desire to learn and to know and to investigate which 
had distinguished her free citizens during the days of great- 
ness and prosperity did not perish with the walls and the 
ships. It continued to live. It became even more brilliant. 

Athens no longer shaped the destinies of the land of Greece. 
But now, as the home of the first great university the city be- 
gan to influence the minds of intelligent people far beyond 
the narrow frontiers of Hellas. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT 



ALEXANDER THE MACEDONIAN ESTAB- 
LISHES A GREEK WORLD-EMPIRE, AND 
WHAT BECAME OF THIS HIGH AMBITION 

When the Ach^eans had left their homes along the banks of 
the Danube to look for pastures new, they had spent some 
time among the mountains of Macedonia. Ever since, the 
Greeks had maintained certain more or less formal relations 
with the people of this northern country. The Macedonians 
from their side had kept themselves well informed about con- 
ditions in Greece. 

Now it happened, just when Sparta and Athens had fin- 
ished their disastrous war for the leadership of Hellas, that 
IMacedonia was ruled by an extraordinarily clever man by 
the name of Philip. He admired the Greek spirit in letters and 
art but he despised the Greek lack of self-control in political 
affairs. It irritated him to see a perfectly good people waste its 
men and money upon fruitless quarrels. So he settled the 
difficulty by making himself the master of all Greece and then 
he asked his new subjects to join him on a voyage which he 
meant to pay to Persia in return for the visit which Xerxes 
had paid the Greeks one hundred and fifty years before. 

Unfortunately Philip was murdered before he could start 
upon this well-prepared expedition. The task of avenging the 
destruction of Athens was left to Philip's son Alexander, the 
beloved pupil of Aristotle, wisest of all Greek teachers. 

83 



84 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Alexander bade farewell to Europe in the spring of the 
year 334 B.C. Seven years later he reached India. In the 
meantime he had destroyed Phoenicia, the old rival of the Greek 
merchants. He had conquered Egypt and had been worshipped 
by the people of the Nile valley as the son and heir of the 
Pharaohs. He had defeated the last Persian king — ^he had 
overthrown the Persian empire — he had given orders to re- 
build Babylon — he had led his troops into the heart of the 
Himalayan mountains and had made the entire world a Mace- 
donian province and dependency. Then he stopped and an- 
nounced even more ambitious plans. 

The newly formed Empire must be brought under the influ- 
ence of the Greek mind. The people must be taught the Greek 
language — they must live in cities built after a Greek model. 
The Alexandrian soldier now turned school-master. The mili- 
tary camps of yesterday became the peaceful centres of the 
newly imported Greek civilisation. Higher and higher did the 
flood of Greek manners and Greek customs rise, when sud- 
denly Alexander was stricken with a fever and died in the old 
palace of King Hammurabi of Babylon in the year 323. 

Then the waters receded. But they left behind the fertile 
clay of a higher civilisation and Alexander, with all his childish 
ambitions and his silly vanites, had performed a most valuable 
service. His Empire did not long survive him. A number of 
ambitious generals divided the territory among themselves. 
But they too remained faithful to the dream of a great world 
brotherhood of Greek and Asiatic ideas and knowledge. 

They maintained their independence until the Romans 
added western Asia and Egypt to their other domains. The 
strange inheritance of this Hellenistic civilisation (part Greek, 
part Persian, part Egyptian and Babylonian) fell to the 
Roman conquerors. During the following centuries, it got 
such a firm hold upon the Roman world, that we feel its in- 
fluence in our own lives this very day. 




GREECE 



A SUMMARY 



A SHORT SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1 to 20 

Thus far, from the top of our high tower we have been 
looking eastward. But from this time on, the history of Egypt 
and Mesopotamia is going to grow less interesting and I must 
take you to study the western landscape. 

Before we do this, let us stop a moment and make clear to 
ourselves what we have seen. 

First of all I showed you prehistoric man — a creature very 
simple in his habits and very unattractive in his manners. I 
told you how he was the most defenceless of the many animals 
that roamed through the early wilderness of the five continents, 
but being possessed of a larger and better brain, he managed to 
hold his own. 

Then came the glaciers and the many centuries of cold 
weather, and life on this planet became so difficult that man was 
obliged to think three times as hard as ever before if he wished 
to survive. Since, however, that "wish to survive" was (and is) 
the mainspring which keeps every living being going full tilt to 
the last gasp of its breath, the brain of glacial man was set to 
work in all earnestness. Not only did these hardy people man- 
age to exist through the long cold spells which killed many 
ferocious animals, but when the earth became warm and com- 
fortable once more, prehistoric man had learned a number of 
things which gave him such great advantages over his less in- 
telligent neighbors that the danger of extinction (a very serious 

85 



86 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

one during the first half million years of man's residence upon 
this planet) became a very remote one. 

I told you how these earliest ancestors of ours were slowly 
plodding along when suddenly (and for reasons that are not 
well understood) the people who lived in the valley of the Nile 
rushed ahead and almost over night, created the first centre of 
civilisation. 

Then I showed you Mesopotamia, "the land between the 
rivers," which was the second great school of the human race. 
And I made j^ou a map of the little island bridges of the ^gean 
Sea, which carried the knowledge and the science of the old 
east to the young west, where lived the Greeks. 

Next I told you of an Indo-European tribe, called the Hel- 
lenes, who thousands of years before had left the heart of 
Asia and who had in the eleventh century before our era pushed 
their way into the rocky peninsula of Greece and who, since 
then, have been known to us as the Greeks. And I told 
j^ou the story of the little Greek cities that were really states, 
where the civilisation of old Egypt and Asia was transfigured 
(that is a big word, but you can "figure out" what it means) 
into something quite new, something that was much nnhlpr and 
finer than anything that had gone before. 

When you look at the map you will see how by this time 
civilisation has described a semi-circle. It begins in Egypt, 
and by way of Mesopotamia and the JEgean Islands it moves 
westward until it reaches the European continent. The first 
four thousand years, Egyptians and Babylonians and Phoeni- 
cians and a large number of Semitic tribes (please remember 
that the Jews were but one of a large number of Semitic peo- 
ples) have carried the torch that was to illuminate the world. 
They now hand it over to the Indo-European Greeks, who be- 
come the teachers of another Indo-European tribe, called the 
Romans. But meanwhile the Semites have pushed westward 
along the northern coast of Africa and have made themselves 
the rulers of the western half of the Mediterranean just when 
the eastern half has become a Greek (or Indo-European) pos- 
session. 



A SUMMARY 87 

This, as you shall see in a moment, leads to a terrible con- 
flict between the two rival races, and out of their struggle arises 
the victorious Roman Empire, which is to take this Egyptian- 
Mesopotamian-Greek civilisation to the furthermost corners of 
the European continent, where it serves as the foundation upon 
which our modern society is based. 

I know all this sounds very complicated, but if you get hold 
of these few principles, the rest of our history will become a 
great deal simpler. The maps will make clear what the words 
fail to tell. And after this short intermission, we go back to 
our story and give you an account of the famous war between 
Carthage and Rome. 




THE SEMITIC COLONY OF CARTHAGE ON THE 
NORTHERN COAST OF AFRICA AND THE 
INDO-EUROPEAN CITY OF ROME ON THE 
WEST COAST OF ITALY FOUGHT EACH 
OTHER FOR THE POSSESSION OF THE 
WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND CARTH- 
AGE WAS DESTROYED 

The little Phoenician trading post of Kart-hadshat stood 
on a low hill which overlooked the African Sea, a stretch of 
water ninety miles wide which separates Africa from Europe. 
It was an ideal spot for a commercial centre. Almost too ideal. 
It grew too fast and became too rich. When in the sixth cen- 
tury before our era, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed 
Tyre, Carthage broke off all further relations with the Mother 
Country and became an independent state — ^the great western 
advance-post of the Semitic races. 

Unfortunately the city had inherited many of the traits 
which for a thousand years had been characteristic of the 
Phoenicians. It was a vast business-house, protected by a 
strong navy, indifferent to most of the finer aspects of life. 
The city and the surrounding country and the distant colonies 
were all ruled by a small but exceedingly powerful group of 
rich men. The Greek word for rich is "ploutos" and the Greeks 

88 



ROME AND CARTHAGE 



89 



called such a government by "rich men" a "Plutocracy." Car- 
thage was a plutocracy and the real power of the state lay in 
the hands of a dozen big ship-owners and mine-owners and 
merchants who met in the back room of an office and regarded 
their common Fatherland as a business enterprise which ought 




CARTHAGE 



I to yield them a decent profit. They were however wide awake 
and full of energy and worked very hard. 

As the years went by the influence of Carthage upon her 
neighbours increased until the greater part of the African 
coast, Spain and certain regions of France were Carthaginian 
possessions, and paid tribute, taxes and dividends to the mighty 
city on the African Sea. 

Of course, such a "plutocracy" was forever at the mercy of 



90 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

the crowd. As long as there was plenty of work and wages 
were high, the majority of the citizens were quite contented, 
allowed their "betters" to rule them and asked no embarrassing 
questions. But when no ships left the harbor, when no ore 
was brought to the smelting-ovens, when dockworkers and 




SPHERES OF INFLUENCE 



stevedores were thrown out of employment, then there were 
grumblings and there was a demand that the popular assembly 
be called together as in the olden days when Carthage had 
been a self-governing republic. 

To prevent such an occurrence the plutocracy was obliged 
to keep the business of the town going at full speed. They 
had managed to do this very successfully for almost five hun- 



ROME AND CARTHAGE 91 

dred years when they were greatly disturbed by certain rumors 
which reached them from the western coast of Italy. It was 
said that a little village on the banks of the Tiber had sud- 
denly risen to great power and was making itself the acknowl- 
edged leader of all the Latin tribes who inhabited central Italy. 
It was also said that this village, which by the way was called 
Rome, intended to build ships and go after the commerce of 
Sicily and the southern coast of France. 

Carthage could not possibly tolerate such competition. The 
young rival must be destroyed lest the Carthaginian rulers 
lose their prestige as the absolute rulers of the western Medi- 
terranean. The rumors were duly investigated and in a gen- 
eral way these were the facts that came to light. 

The west coast of Italy had long been neglected by civili- 
sation. Whereas in Greece all the good harbours faced east- 
ward and enjoyed a full view of the busy islands of the ^gean, 
the west coast of Italy contemplated nothing more exciting 
than the desolate waves of the Mediterranean. The country 
was poor. It was therefore rarely visited by foreign merchants 
and the natives were allowed to live in undisturbed possession 
of their hills and their marshy plains. 

The first serious invasion of this land came from the north. 
At an unknown date certain Indo-European tribes had man- 
aged to find their way through the passes of the Alps and had 
pushed southward until they had filled the heel and the toe of 
the famous Italian boot with their villages and their flocks. 
Of these early conquerors we know nothing. No Homer sang 
their glory. Their own accounts of the foundation of Rome 
(written eight hundred years later when the little city had be- 
come the centre of an Empire ) are fairy stories and do not be- 
long in a history. Romulus and Remus jumping across each 
other's walls (I always forget who jumped across whose wall) 
make entertaining reading, but the foundation of the City of 
Rome was a much more prosaic affair. Rome began as a thou- 
sand American cities have done, by being a convenient place 
for barter and horse-trading. It lay in the heart of the plains 



92 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



^hL "^ffe. c/Ty of r^o/yte. fi^ /ij^eAf B)^. 




HOW THE CITY OF ROME HAPPENED 



ROME AND CARTHAGE 93 

of central Italy. The Tiber provided direct access to the sea. 
The land-road from north to south found here a convenient 
ford which could be used all the year around. And seven little 
hills along the banks of the river offered the inhabitants a safe 
shelter against their enemies who lived in the mountains and 
those who lived beyond the horizon of the nearby sea. 

The mountaineers were called the Sabines. They were a 
rough crowd with an unholy desire for easy plunder. But they 
were very backward. They used stones axes and wooden 
shields and were no match for the Romans with their steel 
swords. The sea-people on the other hand were dangerous 
foes. They were called the Etruscans and they were (and 
still are) one of the great mysteries of history. Nobody knew 
(or knows) whence they came; who they were; what had driven 
them away from their original homes. We have found the re- 
mains of their cities and their cemeteries and their waterworks 
all along the Italian coast. We are familiar with their inscrip- 
tions. But as no one has ever been able to decipher the Etrus- 
can alphabet, these written messages are, so far, merely an- 
noying and not at all useful. 

Our best guess is that the Etruscans came originally from 
Asia Minor and that a great war or a pestilence in that coun- 
try had forced them to go away and seek a new home elsewhere. 
Whatever the reason for their coming, the Etruscans played a 
great role in history. They carried the pollen of the ancient 
civilisation from the east to the west and they taught the 
Romans who, as we know, came from the north',, the first prin- 
ciples of architecture and street-building and fighting and art 
and cookery and medicine and astronomy. 

But just as the Greeks had not loved their ^gean teachers, 
in this same way did the Romans hate their Etruscan masters. 
They got rid of them as soon as they could and the oppor- 
tunity offered itself when Greek merchants discovered the 
commercial possibilities of Italy and when the first Greek 
vessels reached Rome. The Greeks came to trade, but they 
stayed to instruct. They found the tribes who inhabited the 



94 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Roman country-side (and who were called the Latins) quite 
willing to learn such things as might be of practical use. At 
once they understood the great benefit that could be derived 
from a written alphabet and they copied that of the Greeks. 
They also understood the commercial advantages of a well- 
regulated system of coins and measures and weights. Eventu- 
ally the Romans swallowed Greek civilisation hook, line and 
sinker. 

They even welcomed the Gods of the Greeks to their 
country. Zeus was taken to Rome where he became known as 
Jupiter and the other divinities followed him. The Roman Gods 
however never were quite like their cheerful cousins who had ac- 
companied the Greeks on their road through life and through 
history. The Roman Gods were State Functionaries. Each 
one managed his own department with great prudence and a 
deep sense of justice, but in turn he was exact in demanding the 
obedience of his worshippers. This obedience the Romans ren- 
dered with scrupulous care. But they never established the 
cordial personal relations and that charming friendship which 
had existed between the old Hellenes and the mighty residents 
of the high Olympian peak. 

The Romans did not imitate the Greek form of govern- 
ment, but being of the same Indo-European stock as the peo- 
ple of Hellas, the early history of Rome resembles that of 
Athens and the other Greek cities. They did not find it diffi- 
cult to get rid of their kings, the descendants of the ancient 
tribal chieftains. But once the kings had been driven from 
the city, the Romans were forced to bridle the power of the 
nobles, and it took many centuries before they managed to 
establish a system which gave every free citizen of Rome a 
chance to take a personal interest in the affairs of his town. 

Thereafter the Romans enjoyed one great advantage over 
the Greeks. They managed the affairs of their country with- 
out making too many speeches. They were less imaginative 
than the Greeks and they preferred an ounce of action to a 
pound of words. They understood the tendency of the multi- 



ROME AND CARTHAGE 95 

tude (the "plebs," as the assemblage of free citizens was called) 
only too well to waste valuable time upon mere talk. They 
therefore placed the actual business of running the city into 
the hands of two "consuls" who were assisted by a council of 
Elders, called the Senate (because the word "senex" means an 
old man) . As a matter of custom and practical advantage the 
senators were elected from the nobility. But their power had 
been strictly defined. 

Rome at one time had passed through the same sort of 
struggle between the poor and the rich which had forced 
Athens to adopt the laws of Draco and Solon. In Rome this 
conflict had occurred in the fifth century b. c. As a result the 
freemen had obtained a written code of laws which protected 
them against the despotism of the aristocratic judges by the 
institution of the "Tribune." These Tribunes were city-magis- 
trates, elected by the freemen. They had the right to protect 
any citizen against those actions of the government officials 
which were thought to be unjust. A consul had the right to 
condemn a man to death, but if the case had not been abso- 
lutely proved the Tribune could interfere and save the poor 
fellow's life. 

But when I use the word Rome, I seem to refer to a little 
city of a few thousand inhabitants. And the real strength of 
Rome lay in the country districts outside her walls. And it 
was in the government of these outlying provinces that Rome 
at an early age showed her wonderful gift as a colonising 
power. 

In very early times Rome had been the only strongly for- 
tified city in central Italy, but it had always offered a hospitable 
refuge to other Latin tribes who happened to be in danger of 
attack. The Latin neighbours had recognised the advantages 
of a close union with such a powerful friend and they had tried 
to find a basis for some sort of defensive and offensive alli- 
ance. Other nations, Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, 
even Greeks, would have insisted upon a treaty of submission 
on the part of the "barbarians." The Romans did nothing of 



96 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

the sort. They gave the "outsider" a chance to become part- 
ners in a common "res publica" — or common-wealth. 

"You want to join us," they said. "Very well, go ahead 
and join. We shall treat you as if you were full-fledged citi- 
zens of Rome. In return for this privilege we expect you to 
fight for our city, the mother of us all, whenever it shall be nec- 
essary." 

The "outsider" appreciated this generosity and he showed 
his gratitude by his unswerving loyalty. 

Whenever a Greek city had been attacked, the foreign resi- 
dents had moved out as quickly as they could. Why defend 
something which meant nothing to them but a temporary 
boarding house in which they were tolerated as long as they 
paid their bills? But when the enemy was before the gates 
of Rome, all the Latins rushed to her defence. It was their 
Mother who was in danger. It was their true "home" even if 
they lived a hundred miles away and had never seen the walls 
of the sacred Hills. 

No defeat and no disaster could change this sentiment. In 
the beginning of the fourth century B.C. the wild Gauls forced 
their way into Italy. They had defeated the Roman army near 
the River Allia and had marched upon the city. They had 
taken Rome and then they expected that the people would 
come and sue for peace. They waited, but nothing happened. 
After a short time the Gauls found themselves surrounded by 
a hostile population which made it impossible for them to obtain 
supplies. After seven months, hunger forced them to with- 
draw. The policy of Rome to treat the "foreigner" on equal 
terms had proved a great success and Rome stood stronger than 
ever before. 

This short account of the early history of Rome shows you 
the enormous difference between the Roman ideal of a healthy 
state, and that of the ancient world which was embodied in the 
town of Carthage. The Romans counted upon the cheerful 
and hearty co-operation between a number of "equal citi- 
zens." The Carthaginians, following the example of Egypt 



ROME AND CARTHAGE 



97 



and western Asia, insisted upon the unreasoning (and there- 
fore unwilhng) obedience of "Subjects" and when these failed 
they hired professional soldiers to do their fighting for them. 

You will now understand why Carthage was bound to fear 
such a clever and powerful enemy and why the plutocracy of 
Carthage was only too willing to pick a quarrel that they might 
destroy the dangerous rival before it was too late. 

But the Carthaginians, being good business men, knew that 




A FAST ROMAN WARSHIP 



it never pays to rush matters. They proposed to the Romans 
that their respective cities draw two circles on the map and 
that each town claim one of these circles as her own "sphere 
of influence" and promise to keep out of the other fellow's cir- 
cle. The agreement was promptly made and was broken just 
as promptly when both sides thought it wise to send their 
armies to Sicily where a rich soil and a bad government in- 
vited foreign interference. 

The war which followed (the so-called first Punic War) 
lasted twenty-four years. It was fought out on the high seas 
and in the beginning it seemed that the experienced Car- 



98 THE STORY OF MANiaND 

thaginian navy would defeat the newly created Roman fleet. 
Following their ancient tactics, the Carthaginian ships would 
either ram the enemy vessels or by a bold attack from the side 
they would break their oars and would then kill the sailors of 
the helpless vessel with their arrows and with fire balls. But 
Roman engineers invented a new craft which carried a board- 
ing bridge across which the Roman infantrymen stormed the 
hostile ship. Then there was a sudden end to Carthaginian 
victories. At the battle of Mylae their fleet was badly defeated. 
Carthage was obliged to sue for peace, and Sicily became part 
of the Roman domains. 

Twenty-three years later new trouble arose. Rome (in 
quest of copper) had taken the island of Sardinia. Carthage 
(in quest of silver) thereupon occupied all of southern Spain. 
This made Carthage a direct neighbour of the Romans. The 
latter did not like this at all and they ordered their troops to 
cross the Pyrenees and watch the Carthaginian army of occu- 
pation. 

The stage was set for the second outbreak between the two 
rivals. Once more a Greek colony was the pretext for a war. 
The Carthaginians were besieging Saguntum on the east coast 
of Spain. The Saguntians appealed to Rome and Rome, as 
usual, was willing to help. The Senate promised the help of 
the Latin armies, but the preparation for this expedition took 
some time, and meanwhile Saguntum had been taken and had 
been destroyed. This had been done in direct opposition to 
the will of Rome. The Senate decided upon war. One Roman 
army was to cross the African sea and make a landing on Car- 
thaginian soil. A second division was to keep the Carthaginian 
armies occupied in Spain to prevent them from rushing to the 
aid of the home town. It was an excellent plan and every- 
body expected a great victory. But the Gods had decided 
otherwise. 

It was the fall of the year 218 before the birth of Christ 
and the Roman army which was to attack the Carthaginians in 
Spain had left Italy. People were eagerly waiting for news of 



ROME AND CARTHAGE 



99 




HANNIBAL CROSSES THE ALPS 



100 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

an easy and complete victory when a terrible rumour began to 
spread through the plain of the Po. Wild mountaineers, their 
lips trembling with fear, told of hundreds of thousands of 
brown men accompanied by strange beasts "each one as big as 
a house," who had suddenly emerged from the clouds of snow 
which surrounded the old Graian pass through which Hercules, 
thousands of years before, had driven the oxen of Geryon on 
his way from Spain to Greece. Soon an endless stream of 
bedraggled refugees appeared before the gates of Rome, with 
more complete details. Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar, with 
fifty thousand soldiers, nine thousand horsemen and thirty- 
seven fighting elephants, had crossed the Pyrenees. He had 
defeated the Roman army of Scipio on the banks of the Rhone 
and he had guided his army safely across the mountain passes 
of the Alps although it was October and the roads were thickly 
covered with snow and ice. Then he had joined forces with 
the Gauls and together they had defeated a second Roman 
army just before they crossed the Trebia and laid siege to 
Placentia, the northern terminus of the road which connected 
Rome with the province of the Alpine districts. 

The Senate, surprised but calm and energetic as usual, 
hushed up tlie nevvs of these many defeats and sent two fresh 
armies to stop the invader. Hannibal managed to surprise 
these troops on a narrow road along the shores of the Trasi- 
mene Lake and there he killed all the Roman officers and most 
of their men. This time there was a panic among the people 
of Rome, but the Senate kept its nerve. A third army was 
organised and the command was given to Quintus Fabius Max- 
imus with full power to act "as was necessary to save the state." 

Fabius knew that he must be very careful lest all be lost. 
His raw and untrained men, the last available soldiers, were 
no match for Hannibal's veterans. He refused to accept battle 
but forever he followed Hannibal, destroyed everything eat- 
able, destroyed the roads, attacked small detachments and gen- 
erally weakened the morale of the Carthaginian troops by a 
most distressing and annoying form of guerilla warfare. 



ROME AND CARTHAGE 



101 




102 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Such methods however did not satisfy the fearsome crowds 
who had found safety behind the walls of Rome. They wanted 
"action." Something must be done and must be done quickly. 
A popular hero by the name of Varro, the sort of man who 
went about the city telling everybody how much better he could 
do things than slow old Fabius, the "Delayer," was made 
commander-in-chief by popular acclamation. At the battle of 
Cannae (216) he suffered the most terrible defeat of Roman 
history. More than seventy thousand men were killed, Han- 
nibal was master of all Italy. 

He marched from one end of the peninsula to the other, 
proclaiming himself the "deliverer from the yoke of Rome" 
and asking the different provinces to join him in warfare upon 
the mother city. Then once more the wisdom of Rome bore 
noble fruit. With the exceptions of Capua and Syracuse, all 
Roman cities remained loyal. Hannibal, the deliverer, 
found himself opposed by the people whose friend he pre- 
tended to be. He was far away from home and did not like 
the situation. He sent messengers to Carthage to ask for fresh 
supplies and new men. Alas, Carthage could not send him 
either. 

The Romans with their boarding-bridges, were the mas- 
ters of the sea. Hannibal must help himself as best he could. 
He continued to defeat the Roman armies that were sent out 
against him, but his own numbers were decreasing rapidly and 
the Italian peasants held aloof from this self-appointed "de- 
liverer." 

After many years of uninterrupted victories, Hannibal 
found himself besieged in the country which he had just con- 
quered. For a moment, the luck seemed to turn. Hasdrubal, 
his brother, had defeated the Roman armies in Spain. He had 
crossed the Alps to come to Hannibal's assistance. He sent 
messengers to the south to tell of his arrival and ask the other 
army to meet him in the plain of the Tiber. Unforunately the 
messengers fell into the hands of the Romans and Hannibal 
waited in vain for further news until his brother's head, neatly 



ROME AND CARTHAGE 



103 



packed in a basket, came rolling into his camp and told him 
of the fate of the last of the Carthaginian troops. 

With Hasdrubal out of the way, young Publius Scipio 
easily reconquered Spain and four years later the Romans 
were ready for a final attack upon Carthage. Hannibal was 
called back. He crossed the African Sea and tried to organise 
the defences of his home-city. In the year 202 at the battle 
of Zama, the Carthaginians were defeated. Hannibal fled to 
Tyre. From there he went to Asia Minor to stir up the Syrians 
and the Macedonians against Rome. He accomplished very 
little but his activities among these Asiatic powers gave the 
Romans an excuse to carry their warfare into the territory of 
the east and annex the greater part of the ^gean world. 

Driven from one city to an- 
other, a fugitive without a home, 
Hannibal at last knew that the 
end of his ambitious dream had 
come. His beloved city of Car- 
thage had been ruined by the 
war. She had been forced to 
sign a terrible peace. Her navy 
had been sunk. She had been 
forbidden to make war without 
Roman permission. She had 
been condemned to pay the Ro- 
mans millions of dollars for end- 
less years to come. Life offered 
no hope of a better future. In the year 190 B.C. Hannibal took 
poison and killed himself. 

Forty years later, the Romans forced their last war upon 
Carthage. Three long years the inhabitants of the old Phoeni- 
cian colony held out against the power of the new republic. 
Hunger forced them to surrender. The few men and women 
who had survived the siege were sold as slaves. The city was 
set on fire. For two whole weeks the store-houses and the pal- 




THE DEATH OF HANNIBAL 



104 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

aces and the great arsenal burned. Then a terrible curse was 
pronounced upon the blackened ruins and the Roman legions 
returned to Italy to enjoy their victory. 

For the next thousand years, the Mediterranean remained 
a European sea. But as soon as the Roman Empire had been 
destroyed, Asia made another attempt to dominate this great 
inland sea, as you will learn when I tell you about Mohammed. 



THE RISE OF ROME 



HOW ROME HAPPENED 



The Roman Empire was an accident. No one planned it. 
It "happened." No famous general or statesman or cut- 
throat ever got up and said "Friends, Romans, Citizens, we 
must found an Empire. Follow me and together we shall con- 
quer all the land from the Gates of Hercules to Mount Tau- 
rus." 

Rome produced famous generals and equally distinguished 
statesmen and cut-throats, and Roman armies fought all over 
the world. But the Roman empire-making was done without 




HOW ROME HAPPENED 
105 



106 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

a preconceived plan. The average Roman was a very matter- 
of-fact citizen. He disliked theories about government. When 
someone began to recite "eastv/ard the course of Roman Em- 
pire, etc., etc.," he hastily left the forum. He just continued 
to take more and more land because circumstances forced him 
to do so. He was not driven by ambition or by greed. Both 
by nature and inclination he was a farmer and wanted to stay 
at home. But when he was attacked he was obliged to defend 
himself and when the enemy happened to cross the sea to ask 
for aid in a distant country then the patient Roman marched 
many dreary miles to defeat this dangerous foe and when this 
had been accomplished, he stayed behind to adminster his 
newly conquered provinces lest they fall into the hands of 
wandering Barbarians and become themselves a menace to 
Roman safety. It sounds rather complicated and yet to the 
contemporaries it was so very simple, as you shall see in a mo- 
ment. 

In the year 203 B.C. Scipio had crossed the African Sea ^ 
and had carried the war into Africa. Carthage had called Han- 
nibal back. Badly supported by his mercenaries, Hannibal 
had been defeated near Zama. The Romans had asked for his 
surrender and Hannibal had fled to get aid from the kings of 
Macedonia and Syria, as I told you in my last chapter. 

The rulers of these two countries (remnants of the Empire 
of Alexander the Great) just then were contemplating an ex- 
pedition against Egypt. They hoped to divide the rich Nile 
valley between themselves. The king of Egypt had heard of 
this and he had asked Rome to come to his support. The stage 
was set for a number of highly interesting plots and counter- 
plots. But the Romans, with their lack of imagination, rang 
the curtain down before the play had been fairly started. 
Their legions completely defeated the heavy Greek phalanx 
which was still used by the Macedonians as their battle forma- 
tion. That happened in the year 197 B.C. at the battle in the 
plains of Cynoscephalae or "Dogs' Heads," in central Thessaly. 

The Romans then marched southward to Attica and in- 
formed the Greeks that they had come to "deliver the Hellenes 



THE RISE OF ROME 107 

from the Macedonian yoke." The Greeks, having learned 
nothing in their years of semi-slavery, used their new freedom 
in a most unfortunate way. All the little city-states once more 
began to quarrel with each other as they had done in the good 
old days. The Romans, who had little understanding and less 
love for these silly bickerings of a race which they rather de- 
spised, showed great forebearance. But tiring of these endless 




CIVILIZATION GOES WESTWARD 

dissensions they lost patience, invaded Greece, burned down 
Corinth (to "encourage the other Greeks") and sent a Roman 
governor to Athens to rule this turbulent province. In this 
way, Macedonia and Greece became buffer states which pro- 
tected Rome's eastern frontier. 

Meanwhile right across the Hellespont lay the Kingdom of 
Syria, and Antiochus III, who ruled that vast land, had shown 
great eagerness when his distinguished guest. General Han- 



108 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

nibal, explained to him how easy it would be to invade Italy 
and sack the city of Rome. 

Lucius Scipio, a brother of Scipio the African fighter who 
had defeated Hannibal and his Carthaginians at Zama, was 
sent to Asia Minor. He destroyed the armies of the Syrian 
king near Magnesia (in the year 190 B.C.) Shortly after- 
wards, Antiochus was lynched by his own people. Asia Minor 
became a Roman protectorate and the small City-Republic of 
Rome was mistress of most of the lands which bordered upon 
the Mediterranean. 



\\ 






^y 




HOW THE REPUBLIC OF ROME AFTER CEN- 
TURIES OF UNREST AND REVOLUTION BE- 
CAME AN EMPIRE 

When the Roman armies returned from these many vic- 
torious campaigns, they were received with great jubilation. 
Alas and alack ! this sudden glory did not make the country any 
happier. On the contrary. The endless campaigns had ruined 
the farmers who had been obliged to do the hard work of Em- 
pire making. It had placed too much power in the hands of the 
successful generals (and their private friends) who had used 
the war as an excuse for wholesale robbery. 

The old Roman Republic had been proud of the simplicity 
which had characterised the lives of her famous men. The 
new Republic felt ashamed of the shabby coats and the high 
principles which had been fashionable in the days of its grand- 
fathers. It became a land of rich people ruled by rich people 
for the benefit of rich people. As such it was doomed to dis- 
astrous failure, as I shall now tell you. 

Within less than a century and a half, Rome had become 
the mistress of practically all the land around the Mediter- 
ranean. In those early days of history a prisoner of war lost 
his freedom and became a slave. The Roman regarded war as 
a very serious business and he showed no mercy to a conquered 
foe. After the fall of Carthage, the Carthaginian women and 
children were sold into bondage together with their own slaves. 

109 



110 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

And a like fate awaited the obstinate inhabitants of Greece and 
Macedonia and Spain and Syria when they dared to revolt 
against the Roman power. 

Two thousand years ago a slave was merely a piece of 
machinery. Nowadays a rich man invests his money in fac- 
tories. The rich people of Rome (senators, generals and war- 
profiteers) invested theirs in land and in slaves. The land 
they bought or took in the newly-acquired provinces. The 
slaves they bought in open market wherever they happened to 
Jbe cheapest. During most of the third and second centuries 
before Christ there was a plentiful supply, and as a result the 
landowners worked their slaves until they dropped dead in their 
tracks, when they bought new ones at the nearest bargain-coun- 
ter of Corinthian or Carthaginian captives. 

And now behold the fate of the f reeborn farmer ! 

He had done his duty toward Rome and he had fought her 
battles without complaint. But when he came home after ten, 
fifteen or twenty years, his lands were covered with weeds and 
his family had been ruined. But he was a strong man and 
willing to begin life anew. He sowed and planted and waited 
for the harvest. He carried his grain to the market together 
with his cattle and his poultry, to find that the large landowners 
who worked their estates with slaves could underbid him all 
along the line. For a couple of years he tried to hold his own. 
Then he gave up in despair. He left the country and he went 
to the nearest city. In the city he was as hungry as he had been 
before on the land. But he shared his misery with thousands 
of other disinherited beings. They crouched together in filthy 
hovels in the suburbs of the large cities. They were agt 
to get sick and die from terrible epidemics. They were all pro- 
foundly discontented. They had fought for their country and 
this was their reward. They were always willing to listen to 
those plausible spell-binders who gather around a public griev- 
ance like so many hungry vultures, and soon they became a 
grave menace to the safety of the state. 

But the class of the newly-rich shrugged its shoulders. 
"We have our army and our policemen," they argued, "they 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE 111 

will keep the mob in order." And they hid themselves behind 
the high walls of their pleasant villas and cultivated their gar- 
dens and read the poems of a certain Homer which a Greek 
slave had just translated into very pleasing Latin hexameters. 

In a few families however the old tradition of unselfish 
service to the Commonwealth continued. Cornelia, the daugh- 
ter of Scipio Africanus, had been married to a Roman by the 
name of Gracchus. She had two sons, Tiberius and Gains. 
When the boys grew up they entered politics and tried to bring 
about certain much-needed reforms. A census had shown* 
that most of the land of the Italian peninsula was owned by 
two thousand noble families. Tiberius Gracchus, having been 
elected a Tribune, tried to help the freemen. He revived two 
ancient laws which restricted the number of acres which a sin- 
gle owner might possess. In this way he hoped to revive the 
valuable old class of small and independent freeholders. The 
newly-rich called him a robber and an enemy of the state. 
There were street riots. A party of thugs was hired to kill the 
popular Tribune. Tiberius Gracchus was attacked when he 
entered the assembly and was beaten to death. Ten years later 
his brother Gains tried the experiment of reforming a nation 
against the expressed wishes of a strong privileged class. He 
passed a "poor law" which was meant to help the destitute 
farmers. Eventually it made the greater part of the Roman 
citizens into professional beggars. 

He established colonies of destitute people in distant parts 
of the empire, but these settlements failed to attract the right 
sort of people. Before Gains Gracchus could do more harm he 
too was murdered and his followers were either killed or exiled. 
The first two reformers had been gentlemen. The two who 
came after were of a very different stamp. They were pro- 
fessional soldiers. One was called Marius. The name of the 
other was Sulla. Both enjoyed a large personal following. 

Sulla was the leader of the landowners. Marius, the vic- 
tor in a great battle at the foot of the Alps when the Teu- 
tons and the Cimbri had been annihilated, was the popular hero 
of the disinherited freemen. 



112 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Now it happened in the year 88 B.C. that the Senate of 
Rome was greatly disturbed by rumours that came from Asia. 
Mithridates, king of a country along the shores of the Black 
Sea, and a Greek on his mother's side, had seen the possibility 
of establishing a second Alexandrian Empire. He began his 
campaign for world-domination with the murder of all Roman 
citizens who happened to be in Asia Minor, men, women and 
children. Such an act, of course, meant war. The Senate 
equipped an army to march against the King of Pontus and 
punish him for his crime. But who was to be commander-in- 
chief? "Sulla," said the Senate, "because he is Consul." 
"Marius," said the mob, "because he has been Consul five times 
and because he is the champion of our rights." 

Possession is nine points of the law. Sulla happened to be 
in actual command of the army. He went west to defeat 
Mithridates and Marius fled to Africa. There he waited 
until he heard that Sulla had crossed into Asia. He then re- 
turned to Italy, gathered a motley crew of malcontents, 
marched on Rome and entered the city with his professional 
highwaymen, spent five days and five nights, slaughtering the 
enemies of the Senatorial party, got himself elected Consul and 
promptly died from the excitement of the last fortnight. 

There followed four years of disorder. Then Sulla, having 
defeated Mithridates, announced that he was ready to return 
to Rome and settle a few old scores of his own. He was as 
good as his word. For weeks his soldiers were busy executing 
those of their fellow citizens who were suspected of democratic 
sympathies. One day they got hold of a young fellow who 
had been often seen in the company of Marius. They were 
going to hang him when some one interfered. "The boy is too 
young," he said, and they let him go. His name was Julius 
Csesar. You shall meet him again on the next page. 

As for Sulla, he became "Dictator," which meant sole and 
supreme ruler of all the Roman possessions. He ruled Rome 
for four years, and he died quietly in his bed, having spent the 
last year of his life tenderly raising his cabbages, as was the 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE US 

custom of so many Romans who had spent a lifetime kilHng 
their fellow-men. 

But conditions did not grow better. On the contrary, they 
grew worse. Another general, Gnasus Pomj^eius, or Pompey, 
a close friend of Sulla, went east to renew the war against the 
ever troublesome Mithridates. He drove that energetic poten- 
tate into the mountains where Mithridates took poison and 
killed himself, well knowing what fate awaited him as a Roman 
captive. Next he re-established the authority of Rome over 
Syria, destroyed Jerusalem, roamed through western Asia, 
trying to revive the myth of Alexander the Great, and at last 
(in the year 62) returned to Rome with a dozen ship-loads of 
defeated Kings and Princes and Generals, all of whom were 
forced to march in the triumphal procession of this enormously 
popular Roman who presented his city with the sum of forty 
million dollars in plunder. 

It was necessary that the government of Rome be placed 
in the hands of a strong man. Only a few months before, the 
town had almost fallen into the hands of a good-for-nothing 
young aristocrat by the name of Catiline, who had gambled 
away his money and hoped to reimburse himself for his losses by 
a little plundering. Cicero, a public-spirited lawyer, had dis- 
covered the plot, had warned the Senate, and had forced Cati- 
line to flee. But there were other young men with similar am- 
bitions and it was no time for idle talk. 

Pompey organised a triumvirate which was to take charge 
of affairs. He became the leader of this Vigilante Commit- 
tee. Gaius Julius Csesar, who had made a reputation for him- 
self as governor of Spain, was the second in command. The 
third was an indifferent sort of person by the name of Crassus. 
He had been elected because he was incrediblj^ rich, having been 
a successful contractor of war supplies. He soon went upon 
an expedition against the Parthians and was killed. 

As for Caesar, who was by far the ablest of the three, he 
decided that he needed a little more military glory to become 
a popular hero. He crossed the Alps and conquered that part 
of the world which is now called France. Then he hammered 



114 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



a solid wooden bridge across the Rhine and invaded the land 
of the wild Teutons. Finally he took ship and visited England. 
Heaven knows where he might have ended if he had not been 
forced to return to Italy. Pompey, so he was informed, had 
been appointed dictator for life. This of course meant that 
Cffisar was to be placed on the list of the "retired officers," and 
the idea did not appeal to him. He remembered that he had 
begun life as a follower of Marius. He decided to teach the 




C^SAR GOES WEST 



Senators and their "dictator" another lesson. He crossed the 
Rubicon River which separated the province of Cis-alpine Gaul 
from Italy. Everywhere he was received as the "friend of the 
people." Without difficulty Csesar entered Rome and Pompey 
fled to Greece. Cassar followed him and defeated his followers 
near Pharsalus. Pompey sailed across the Mediterranean and 
escaped to Egypt. When he landed he was murdered by order 
of young king Ptolemy. A few days later Caesar arrived. 
He found himself caught in a trap. Both the Egyptians and 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE 115 

the Roman garrison which had remained faithful to Pompey, 
attacked his camp. 

Fortune was with Caesar. He succeeded in setting fire to 
the Egyptian fleet. Incidentally the sparks of the burning 
vessels fell on the roof of the famous library of Alexandria 
(which was just off the water front,) and destroyed it. Next 
he attacked the Egyptian army, drove the soldiers into the 
Nile, drowned Ptolemy, and established a new government 
under Cleopatra, the sister of the late king. Just then word 
reached him that Pharnaces, the son and heir of Mithridates, 
had gone on the war-path. Cssar marched northward, de- 
feated Pharnaces in a war which lasted five days, sent word of 
his victory to Rome in the famous sentence "veni, vidi, vici," 
which is Latin for "I came, I saw, I conquered," and returned 
to Egypt where he fell desperately in love with Cleopatra, who 
followed him to Rome when he returned to take charge of the 
government, in the year 46. He marched at the head of not 
less than four different victory-parades, having won four dif- 
ferent campaigns. 

Then Csesar appeared in the Senate to report upon his ad- 
ventures, and the grateful Senate made him "dictator" for 
ten years. It was a fatal step. 

The new dictator made serious attempts to reform the 
Roman state. He made it possible for freemen to become 
members of the Senate. He conferred the rights of citizenship 
upon distant communities as had been done in the early days 
of Roman history. He permitted "foreigners" to exercise in- 
fluence upon the government. He reformed the administra- 
tion of the distant provinces which certain aristocratic families 
had come to regard as their private possessions. In short he 
did many things for the good of the majority of the people but 
which made him thoroughly unpopular with the most powerful 
men in the state. Half a hundred young aristocrats formed a 
plot "to save the Republic." On the Ides of March (the fif- 
teenth of March according to that new calendar which Csesar 
had brought with him from Egypt) Casar was murdered when 
he entered the Senate. Once more Rome was without a master. 



116 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 




THE GREAT ROMAN EMPIRE 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE 117 

There were two men who tried to continue the tradition of 
Csesar's glory. One was Antony, his former secretary. The 
other was Octavian, Csesar's grand-nephew and heir to his es- 
tate. Octavian remained in Rome, but Antony went to Egypt 
to be near Cleopatra with whom he too had fallen in love, as 
seems to have been the habit of Roman generals. 

A war broke out between the two. In the battle of Ac- 
tium, Octavian defeated Antony. Antony killed himself and 
Cleopatra was left alone to face the enemy. She tried very 
hard to make Octavian her third Roman conquest. When she 
saw that she could make no impression upon this very proud 
aristocrat, she killed herself, and Egypt became a Roman prov- 
ince. 

As for Octavian, he was a very wise young man and he did 
not repeat the mistake of his famous uncle. He knew how 
people will shy at words. He was very modest in his demands 
when he returned to Rome. He did not want to be a "dicta- 
tor." He would be entirely satisfied with the title of "the Hon- 
ourable." But when the Senate, a few years later, addressed 
him as Augustus — the Illustrious — he did not object and a few 
years later the man in the street called him Ctesar, or Kaiser, 
while the soldiers, accustomed to regard Octavian as their Com- 
mander-in-chief referred to him as the Chief, the Imperator or 
Emperor. The Repubhc had become an Empire, but the aver- 
age Roman was hardly aware of the fact. 

In 14 A.D. his position as the Absolute Ruler of the 
Roman people had become so well established that he was made 
an object of that divine worship which hitherto had been re- 
served for the Gods. And his successors were true "Emper- 
ors" — the absolute rulers of the greatest empire the world had 
ever seen. 

If the truth be told, the average citizen was sick and tired 
of anarchy and disorder. He did not care who ruled him pro- 
vided the new master gave him a chance to live quietly and 
without the noise of eternal street riots. Octavian assured his 
subjects forty years of peace. He had no desire to extend the 
frontiers of his domains. In the year 9 a.d. he had contem- 



118 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

plated an invasion of the northwestern wilderness which was 
inhabited by the Teutons. But Varrus, his general, had been 
killed with all his men in the Teutoburg Woods, and after that 
the Romans made no further attempts to civilise these wild 
people. 

They concentrated their efforts upon the gigantic problem 
of internal reform. But it was too late to do much good. Two 
centuries of revolution and foreign war had repeatedly killed 
the best men among the younger generations. It had ruined 
the class of the free farmers. It had introduced slave laboj, 
against which no freeman could hope to compete. It had 
turned the cities into beehives inhabited by pauperized and 
unhealthy mobs of runaway peasants. It had created a large 
bureaucracy — petty officials who were underpaid and who were 
forced to take graft in order to buy bread and clothing for 
their families. Worst of all, it had accustomed people to vio- 
lence, to blood-shed, to a barbarous pleasure in the pain and 
suffering of others. 

Outwardly, the Roman state during the first century of our 
era was a magnificent political structure, so large that Alex- 
ander's empire became one of its minor provinces. Underneath 
this glory there lived millions upon millions of poor and tired 
human beings, toiling like ants who have built a nest under- 
neath a heavy stone. They worked for the benefit of some one 
else. They shared their food with the animals of the fields. 
They lived in stables. They died without hope. 

It was the seven hundred and fiftj^-third year since the 
founding of Rome. Gains Julius Casar Octavianus Augustus 
was living in the palace of the Palatine Hill, busily engaged 
upon the task of ruling his empire. 

In a little village of distant Syria, Mary, the wife of Joseph 
the Carpenter, was tending her little boy, born in a stable of 
Bethlehem. 

This is a strange world. 

Before long, the palace and the stable were to meet in open 
combat. 

And-lhe stable was_to emerge victorious. 



JOSHUA OF NAZARETH 



THE STORY OF JOSHUA OF NAZARETH, WHOM 
THE GREEKS CALLED JESUS 

In the autumn of the year of the city 783 (which would be 
62 A.D., in our way of counting time) ^sculapius Cultellus, a 
Roman physician, wrote to his nephew who was with the army 
in Syria as follows: 

My dear Nephew, 

A few days ago I was called in to prescribe for a sick man 
named Paul. He appeared to be a Roman citizen of Jewish 
parentage, well educated and of agreeable manners. I had 
been told that he was here in connection with a law-suit, an ap- 
peal from one of our provincial courts, C^esarea or some such 
place in the eastern Mediterranean. He had been described to 
me as a "wild and violent" fellow who had been making 
speeches against the People and against the Law. I found him 
very intelligent and of great honesty. 

A friend of mine who used to be with the army in Asia 
Minor tells me that he heard something about him in Ephesus 
where he was preaching sermons about a strange new God. I 
asked my patient if this were true and whether he had told the 
people to rebel against the will of our beloved Emperor. Paul 
answered me that the Kingdom of which he had spoken was 
not of this world and he added many strange utterances which 
I did not understand, but which were probably due to his 
fever. 

119 



120 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

His personality made a great impression upon me and I 
was sorry to hear that he was killed on the Ostian Road a few 
days ago. Therefore I am writing this letter to you. When 
next you visit Jerusalem, I want you to find out something 
about my friend Paul and the strange Jewish prophet, who 
seems to have been his teacher. Our slaves are getting much 
excited about this so-called Messiah, and a few of them, who 
openly talked of the new kingdom (whatever that means) have 
been crucified. I would like to know the truth about all these 
rumours and I am 

Your devoted Uncle, 

iEsCULAPIUS CULTELLUS. 

Six weeks later, Gladius Ensa, the nephew, a captain of the 
VII Gallic Infantry, answered as follows: 

My dear Uncle, 

I received your letter and I have obeyed your instructions. 

Two weeks ago our brigade was sent to Jerusalem. There 
have been several revolutions during the last century and there 
is not much left of the old city. We have been here now for a 
month and to-morrow we shall continue our march to Petra, 
where there has been trouble with some of the Arab tribes. I 
shall use this evening to answer your questions, but pray do 
not expect a detailed repoi-t. 

I have talked with most of the older men in this city but 
few have been able to give me any definite information. A 
few days ago a peddler came to the camp. I bought some of 
his olives and I asked him whether he had ever heard of the 
famous Messiah who was killed when he was young. He said 
that he remembered it very clearly, because his father had 
taken him to Golgotha (a hill just outside the city) to see 
the execution, and to show him what became of the enemies of 
the laws of the people of Judasa. He gave me the address of 
one Joseph, who had been a personal friend of the Messiah 
and told me that I had better go and see him if I wanted to 
know more. 



JOSHUA OF NAZARETH 



121 



This morning I went to call on Joseph. He was quite an 
old man. He had been a fisherman on one of the fresh-water 
lakes. His memory was clear, and from him at last I got a 
fairly definite account of what had happened during the trou- 
blesome days before I was born. 

Tiberius, our great and glorious emperor, was on the throne, 
and an officer of the name of Pontius Pilatus was governor of 








THE HOLY LAND 

Judaea and Samaria. Joseph knew little about this Pilatus. 
He seemed to have been an honest enough official who left a 
decent reputation as procurator of the province. In the year 
755 or 756 (Joseph had forgotten when) Pilatus was called to 
Jerusalem on account of a riot. A certain young man (the 
son of a carpenter of Nazareth) was said to be planning a 
revolution against the Roman government. Strangely enough 
our own intelligence officers, who are usually well informed. 



m THE STORY OF MANKIND 

appear to have heard nothing about it, and when they inves- 
tigated the matter they reported that the carpenter was an 
excellent citizen and that there was no reason to proceed against 
him. But the old-fashioned leaders of the Jewish faith, accord- 
ing to Joseph, were much upset. They greatly disliked his 
popularity with the masses of the poorer Hebrews. The 
"Nazarene" (so they told Pilatus) had publicly claimed that a 
Greek or a Roman or even a Philistine, who tried to live a de- 
cent and honourable life, was quite as good a Jew who spent 
his days studying the ancient laws of Moses. Pilatus does not 
seem to have been impressed by this argument, but when the 
crowds around the temple threatened to lynch Jesus, and kill 
all his followers, he decided to take the carpenter into custody 
to save his life. 

He does not appear to have understood the real nature of 
the quarrel. Whenever he asked the Jewish priests to explain 
their grievances, they shouted "heresy" and "treason" and got 
terribly excited. Finally, so Joseph told me, Pilatus sent for 
Joshua (that was the name of the Nazarene, but the Greeks 
who live in this part of the world always refer to him as Jesus ) 
to examine him personally. He talked to him for several 
hours. He asked him about the "dangerous doctrines" which 
he was said to have preached on the shores of the sea of Galilee. 
But Jesus answered that he never referred to politics. He was 
not so much interested in the bodies of men as in Man's soul. 
He wanted all people to regard their neighbours as their 
brothers and to love one single God, who was the father of all 
living beings. 

Pilatus, who seems to have been well versed in the doctrines 
of the Stoics and the other Greek philosophers, does not ap- 
pear to have discovered an5i;hing seditious in the talk of Jesus. 
According to my informant he made another attempt to save 
the life of the kindly prophet. He kept putting the execution 
off. Meanwhile the Jewish people, lashed into fury by their 
priests, got frantic with rage. There had been many riots in 
Jerusalem before this and there were only a few Roman sol- 
diers within calling distance. Reports were being sent to the 



JOSHUA OF NAZARETH 123 

Roman authorities in Csesarea that Pilatus had "fallen a vic- 
tim to the teachings of the Nazarene." Petitions were being 
circulated all through the city to have Pilatus recalled, because 
he was an enemy of the Emperor. You know that our gov- 
ernors have strict instructions to avoid an open break with 
their foreign subjects. To save the country from civil war, 
Pilatus finally sacrificed his prisoner, Joshua, who behaved 
with great dignity and who forgave all those who hated him. 
He was crucified amidst the howls and the laughter of the 
Jerusalem mob. 

That is what Joseph told me, with tears running down his 
old cheeks. I gave him a gold piece when I left him, but he 
refused it and asked me to hand it to one poorer than himself. 
I also asked him a few questions about your friend Paul. Pie 
had known him slightly. He seems to have been a tent maker 
who gave up his profession that he might preach the words of 
a loving and forgiving God, who was so very different from 
that Jehovah of whom the Jewish priests are telling us all 
the time. Afterwards, Paul appears to have travelled much 
in Asia Minor and in Greece, telling the slaves that they were 
all children of one loving Father and that happiness awaits all, 
both rich and poor, who have tried to live honest lives and have 
done good to those who were suffering and miserable. 

I hope that I have answered your questions to your satis- 
faction. The whole story seems very harmless to me as far as 
the safety of the state is concerned. But then, we Romans 
never have been able to understand the people of this province. 
I am sorry that they have killed your friend Paul. I wish that 
I were at home again, and I am, as ever. 

Your dutiful nephew, 

Gladius Ensa. 



THE FALL OF ROME 



THE TWILIGHT OF ROME 

The text-books of ancient History give the date 476 as the 
jT^ear in which Rome fell, because in that year the last emperor 
was driven off his throne. But Rome, which was not built in 
a day, took a long time falling. The process was so slow and 
so gradual that most Romans did not realise how their old 
world was coming to an end. They complained about the un- 
rest of the times — they grumbled about the high prices of food 
and about the low wages of the workmen — ^they cursed the 
profiteers who had a monopoly of the grain and the wool and 
the gold coin. Occasionally they rebelled against an unusually 
rapacious governor. But the majority of the people during the 
first four centuries of our era ate and drank (whatever their 
purse allowed them to buy) and hated or loved (according to 
their nature) and went to the theatre (whenever there was a 
free show of fighting gladiators) or starved in the slums of the 
big cities, utterly ignorant of the fact that their empire had 
outlived its usefulness and was doomed to perish. 

How could they realise the threatened danger? Rome 
made a fine showing of outward glory. Well-paved roads con- 
nected the diiFerent provinces, the imperial police were active 
and showed little tenderness for highwaymen. The frontier 
was closely guarded against the savage tribes who seemed to 
be occupying the waste lands of northern Europe. The whole 
world was paying tribute to the mighty city of Rome, and a 

124 



THE FALL OF ROME 125 

score of able men were working day and night to undo the 
mistakes of the past and bring about a return to the happier 
conditions of the early Republic. 

But the underlying causes of the decay of the State, of 
which I have told you in a former chapter, had not been 
removed and reform therefore was impossible. 

Rome was, first and last and all the time, a city-state as 
Athens and Corinth had been city-states in ancient Hellas. It 
had been able to dominate the Italian peninsula. But Rome 
as the ruler of the entire civilised world was a political impos- 
sibility and could not endure. Her young men were killed in 
her endless wars. Her farmers were ruined by long military 
service and by taxation. They either became professional 
beggars or hired themselves out to rich landowners who gave 
them board and lodging in exchange for their services and 
made them "serfs," those unfortunate human beings who are 
neither slaves nor freemen, but who have become part of the 
soil upon which they work, like so many cows, and the trees. 

The Empire, the State, had become everything. The com- 
mon citizen had dwindled down to less than nothing. As for 
the slaves, they had heard the words that were spoken by Paul. 
They had accepted the message of the humble carpenter of 
Nazareth. They did not rebel against their masters. On the 
contrary, they had been taught to be meek and they obeyed 
their superiors. But they had lost all interest in the affairs 
of this world which had proved such a miserable place of abode. 
They were willing to fight the good fight that they might enter 
into the Kingdom of Heaven. But they were not willing to 
engage in warfare for the benefit of an ambitious emperor who 
aspired to glory by way of a foreign campaign in the land of 
the Parthians or the Numidians or the Scots. 

And so conditions grew worse as the centuries went by. 
The first Emperors had continued the tradition of "leader- 
ship" which had given the old tribal chieftains such a hold upon 
their subjects. But the Emperors of the second and third 
centuries were Barrack-Emperors,' professional soldiers, who 
existed by the grace of their body-guards, the so-called Prse- 



126 



THE STORY OF IVIANKIND 



torians. They succeeded each other with terrifying rapidity, 
murdering their way into the palace and being murdered out 
of it as soon as their successors had become rich enough to bribe 
the guards into a new rebellion. 

Meanwhile the barbarians were hammering at the gates of 
the northern frontier. As there were no longer any native 
Roman armies to stop their progress, foreign mercenaries had 
to be hired to fight the invader. As the foreign soldier hap- 
pened to be of the same blood as his supposed enemy, he was 




WHEN THE BARBARIANS GOT THROUGH WITH A ROMAN CITY 



apt to be quite lenient when he engaged in battle. Finally, 
by way of experiment, a few tribes were allowed to settle 
within the confines of the Empire. Others followed. Soon 
these tribes complained bitterly of the greedy Roman tax- 
gatherers, who took away their last penny. When they got 
no redress they marched to Rome and loudly demanded that 
they be heard. 

This made Rome very uncomfortable as an Imperial resi- 
dence. Constantine (who ruled from 323 to 337) looked for 
a new capital. He chose Byzantium, the gate-way for the 
commerce between Europe and Asia. The city was renamed 




ROME 



THE FALL OF ROME 127 

Constantinople, and the court moved eastward. When Con- 
stantine died, his two sons, for the sake of a more efficient 
administration, divided the Empire between them. The elder 
lived in Rome and ruled in the west. The younger stayed in 
Constantinople and was master of the east. 

Then came the fourth century and the terrible visitation 
of the Huns, those mysterious Asiatic horsemen who for more 
than two centuries maintained themselves in Northern Europe 
and continued their career of bloodshed until they were de- 
feated near Chalons-sur-Marne in France in the year 451. 
As soon as the Huns had reached the Danube they had begun 
to press hard upon the Goths. The Goths, in order to save 
themselves, were thereupon obliged to invade Rome. The 
Emperor Valens tried to stop them, but was killed near 
Adrianople in the year 378. Twenty-two years later, under 
their king, Alaric, these same West Goths marched westward 
and attacked Rome. They did not plunder, and destroyed 
only a few palaces. Next came the Vandals, and showed less 
respect for the venerable traditions of the city. Then the 
Burgundians. Then the East Goths. Then the Alemanni. 
Then the Franks. There was no end to the invasions. Rome 
at last was at the mercy of every ambitious highway robber 
who could gather a few followers. 

In the year 402 the Emperor fled to Ravenna, which was 
a sea-port and strongly fortified, and there, in the year 475, 
Odoacer, comimander of a regiment of the German mercen- 
aries, who wanted the farms of Italy to be divided among them- 
selves, gently but effectively pushed Romulus Augustulus, the 
last of the emperors who ruled the western division, from his 
throne, and proclaimed himself Patriarch or ruler of Rome. 
The eastern Emperor, who was very busy with his own affairs, 
recognised him, and for ten years Odoacer ruled what was 
left of the western provinces. 

A few years later, Theodoric, King of the East Goths, 
invaded the newly formed Patriciat, took Ravenna, murdered 
Odoacer at his own dinner table, and established a Gothic 



128 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 




THE FALL OF ROME 129 

Kingdom amidst the ruins of the eastern part of the Empire. 
This Patriciate state did not last long. In the sixth century a 
motley crowd of Longobards and Saxons and Slavs and Avars 
invaded Italy, destroyed the Gothic kingdom, and established 
a new state of which Pavia became the capital. 

Then at last the imperial city sank into a state of utter 
neglect and despair. The ancient palaces had been plundered 
time and again. The schools had been burned down. The 
teachers had been stai^ved to death. The rich people had been 
thrown out of their villas which were now inhabited by evil- 
smelling and hairy barbarians. The roads had fallen into 
decay. The old bridges were gone and commerce had come 
to a standstill. Civilisation — the product of thousands of years 
of patient labor on the part of Egyptians and Babylonians and 
Greeks and Romans, which had lifted man high above the 
most daring dreams of his earliest ancestors, threatened to 
perish from the western continent. 

It is true that in the far east, Constantinople continued to 
be the centre of an Empire for another thousand years. But 
it hardly counted as a part of the European continent. Its 
interests lay in the east. It began to forget its western origin. 
Gradually the Roman language was given up for the Greek. 
The Roman alphabet was discarded and Roman law was writ- 
ten in Greek characters and explained by Greek judges. The 
Emperor became an Asiatic despot, worshipped as the god-like 
kings of Thebes had been worshipped in the valley of the 
Nile, three thousand years before. When missionaries of the 
Byzantine church looked for fresh fields of activity, they went 
eastward and carried the civilisation of Byzantium into the 
vast wilderness of Russia. 

As for the west, it was left to the mercies of the Barbarians. 
For twelve generations, murder, war, arson, plundering were 
the order of the day. One thing — and one thing alone — saved 
Europe from complete destruction, from a return to the days 
of cave-men and the hyena. 

This was the church — the flock of humble men and women 



130 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

who for many centuries had confessed themselves the fol- 
lowers of Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, who had been 
killed that the mighty Roman Empire might be saved the 
trouble of a street-riot in a little city somewhere along the 
Syrian frontier. 



HOW ROME BECAME THE CENTRE OF THE 
CHRISTIAN WORLD 

The average intelligent Roman who lived under the Em- 
pire had taken very little interest in the gods of his fathers. 
A few times a year he went to the temple, but merely as a 
matter of custom. He looked on patiently when the people 
celebrated a religious festival with a solemn procession. But he 
regarded the worship of Jupiter and Minerva and Neptune as 
something rather childish, a survival from the crude days of 
the early republic and not a fit subject of study for a man 
who had mastered the works of the Stoics and the Epicureans 
and the other great philosophers of Athens. 

This attitude made the Roman a very tolerant man. The 
government insisted that all people, Romans, foreigners, 
Greeks, Babylonians, Jews, should pay a certain outward re- 
spect to the image of the Emperor which was supposed to stand 
in every temple, just as a picture of the President of the 
United States is apt to hang in an American Post Office. But 
this was a formality without any deeper meaning. Generally 
speaking everybody could honour, revere and adore whatever 
gods he pleased, and as a result, Rome was filled with all 
sorts of queer httle temples and synagogues, dedicated to the 
worship of Egyptian and African and Asiatic divinities. 

When the first disciples of Jesus reached Rome and began 
to preach their new doctrine of a universal brotherhood of man, 

131 



132 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

nobody objected. The man in the street stopped and Hstened. 
Home, the capital of the world, had always been full of wander- 
ing preachers, each proclaiming his own "mystery." Most of 
the self-appointed priests appealed to the senses — promised 
golden rewards and endless pleasure to the followers of their 
own particular god. Soon the crowd in the street noticed 
that the so-called Christians (the followers of the Christ or 
"anointed") spoke a very different language. They did not 
appear to be impressed by great riches or a noble position. 
They extolled the beauties of poverty and humility and meek- 
ness. These were not exactly the virtues which had made 
Rome the mistress of the world. It was rather interesting to 
listen to a "mystery" which told people in the hey-day of their 
glory that their worldly success could not possibly bring them 
lasting happiness. 

Besides, the preachers of the Christian mystery told dread- 
ful stories of the fate that awaited those who refused to listen to 
the words of the true God. It was never wise to take chances. 
Of course the old Roman gods still existed, but were they 
strong enough to protect their friends against the powers of 
this new deity who had been brought to Europe from distant 
Asia? People began to have doubts. They returned to hsten 
to further explanations of the new creed. After a while they 
began to meet the men and women who preached the words of 
Jesus. They found them very different from the average 
Roman priests. They were all dreadfully poor. They were 
kind to slaves and to animals. They did not try to gain riches, 
but gave away whatever they had. The example of their un- 
selfish lives forced many Romans to forsake the old religion. 
They joined the small communities of Christians who met in 
the back rooms of private houses or somewhere in an open field, 
and the temples were deserted. 

This went on year after year and the number of Christians 
continued to increase. Presbyters or priests (the original 
Greek meant "elder") were elected to guard the interests of 
the small churches. A bishop was made the head of all the 
communities within a single province. Peter, who had fol- 



RISE OF THE CHURCH 



133 



lowed Paul to Rome, was the first Bishop of Rome. In due 
time his successors (who were addressed as Father or Papa) 
came to be known as Popes. 

The church became a powerful institution within the Em- 
pire. The Christian doctrines appealed to those who despaired 
of this world. They also attracted manj^ strong men who 
found it impossible to make a career under the Imperial gov- 








((liiii,|ii(nUit>iiuu-iuu<iiir'ir.T 




A CLOISTER 



ernment, but who could exercise their gifts of leadership among 
the humble followers of the Nazarene teacher. At last the 
state was obliged to take notice. The Roman Empire ( I have 
said this before ) was tolerant through indifference. It allowed 
everybody to seek salvation after his or her own fashion. But 
it insisted that the different sects keep the peace among them- 
selves and obey the wise rule of "live and let live." 

The Christian communities however, refused to practise any 



134. JHE STORY OF MANKIND 

/ sort of tolerance. They publicly declared that thejr God, and 

/ their God alone, was the true ruler of Heaven and Earth, 

V. and that all other gods were imposters. / , This seej^ed unfair 

to the other sects and the police discouraged such utterances. 

The Christians persisted. 

Soon there were further difficulties. The Christians refused 
to go through the formalities of paying homage to the em- 
peror. They refused to appear when they were called upon 
to join the army. The Roman magistrates threatened to 




THE GOTHS ARE COMING 

punish them. The Christians answered that this miserable 
world was only the ante-room to a very pleasant Heaven and 
that they were more than willing to suffer death for their 
principles. The Romans, puzzled by such conduct, sometimes 
killed the offenders, but more often they did not. There was 
a certain amount of lynching during the earliest years of the 
church, but this was the work of that part of the mob which 
accused their meek Christian neighbours of every conceivable 
crime, ( such as slaughtering and eating babies, bringing about 
sickness and pestilence, betraying the country in times of dan- 
ger) because it was a harmless sport and devoid of danger, as 
the Christians refused to fight back. 



RISE OF THE CHURCH 135 

Meanwhile, Rome continued to be invaded by the Barbar- 
ians and when her armies failed, Christian missionaries went 
forth to preach their gospel of peace to the wild Teutons. 
They were strong men without fear of death. They spoke a 
language which left no doubt as to the future of unrepentant 
sinners. The Teutons were deeply impressed. They still 
had a deep respect for the wisdom of the ancient city of Rome. 
Those men were Romans. They probably spoke the truth. 
Soon the Christian missionary became a power in the savage 
regions of the Teutons and the Franks. Half a dozen mis- 
sionaries were as valuable as a whole regiment of soldiers. 
The Emperors began to understand that the Christian might 
be of great use to them. In some of the provinces they were 
given equal rights with those who remained faithful to the old 
gods. The great change however came during the last half 
of the fourth century. 

Constantine, sometimes (Heaven knows why) called Con- 
stantine the Great, was emperor. He was a terrible ruffian, 
but people of tender qualities could hardly hope to survive 
in that hard-fighting age. During a long and checkered career, 
Constantine had experienced many ups and downs. Once, 
when almost defeated by his enemies, he thought that he would 
try the power of this new Asiatic deity of whom everybody was 
talking. He promised that he too would become a Chris':ian 
if he were successful in the coming battle. He won the victory 
and thereafter he was convinced of the power of the Christian 
God and allowed himself to be baptised. 

From that moment on, the Christian church was officially 
recognised and this greatly strengthened the position of the 
new faith. 

But the Christians still formed a very small minority of 
all the people, (not more than five or six percent,) and in order 
to win, they were forced to refuse all compromise. The old 
gods must be destroyed. For a short spell the emperor Julian, 
a lover of Greek wisdom, managed to save the pagan Gods 
from further destruction. But Julian died of his wounds dur- 
ing a campaign in Persia and his successor Jovian re-established 



136 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

the church in all its glory. One after the other the doors of the 
ancient temples were then closed. Then came the emperor 
Justinian (who built the church of Saint Sophia in Constan- 
tinople), who discontinued the school of philosophy at Athens 
which had been founded by Plato. 

That was the end of the old Greek world, in which man 
had been allowed to think his own thoughts and dream his own 
dreams according to his desires. The somewhat vague rules 
of conduct of the philosophers had proved a poor compass 
by which to steer the ship of life after a deluge of savagery 
and ignorance had swept away the established order of things. 
There was need of something more positive and more definite. 
This the Church provided. 

During an age when nothing was certain, the church stood 
like a rock and never receded from those principles which it 
held to be true and sacred. This steadfast courage gained the 
admiration of the multitudes and carried the church of Rome 
safely through the difficulties which destroyed the Roman state. 

There was however, a certain element of luck in the final 
success of the Christian faith. After the disappearance of 
Theodoric's Roman-Gothic kingdom, in the first century, 
Italy was comparatively free from foreign invasion. The 
Lombards and Saxons and Slavs who succeeded the Goths were 
weak and backward tribes. Under those circumstances it was 
possible for the bishops of Rome to maintain the independence 
of their city. Soon the remnants of the empire, scattered 
throughout the peninsula, recognised the Dukes of Rome (or 
bishops) as their political and spiritual rulers. 

The stage was set for the appearance of a strong man. 
He came in the year 590 and his name was Gregory. He be- 
longed to the ruling classes of ancient Rome, and he had 
been "prefect" or mayor of the city. Then he had become 
a monk and a bishop and finally, and much against his will, 
(for he wanted to be a missionary and preach Christianity to 
the heathen of England,) he had been dragged to the Church 
of Saint Peter to be made Pope. He ruled only fourteen 
years but when he died the Christian world of western Europe 



RISE OF THE CHURCH 137 

had officially recognised the bishops of Rome, the Popes, as 
the head of the entire church. 

This power, however, did not extend to the east. In Con- 
stantinople the Emperors continued the old custom which had 
recognised the successors of Augustus and Tiberius both as 
head of the government and as High Priest of the Established 
Religion. In the year 1453 the eastern Roman Empire was 
conquered by the Turks. Constantinople was taken, and Con- 
stantine Paleolgue, the last Roman Emperor, was killed on 
the steps of the Church of the Holy Sophia. 

A few years before, Zoe, the daughter of his brother 
Thomas, had married Ivan III of Russia. In this way did the 
grand-dukes of Moscow fall heir to the traditions of Constan- 
tinople. The double-eagle of old Byzantium (reminiscent of 
the days when Rome had been divided into an eastern and a 
western part) became the coat of arms of modern Russia. 
The Tsar who had been merely the first of the Russian nobles, 
assumed the aloofness and the dignity of a Roman emperor 
before whom all subjects, both high and low, were incon- 
siderable slaves. 

The court was refashioned after the oriental pattern which 
the eastern Emperors had imported from Asia and from Egypt 
and which (so they flattered themselves) resembled the court 
of Alexander the Great. This strange inheritance which the 
dying Byzantine Empire bequeathed to an unsuspecting world 
continued to live with great vigour for six more centuries, 
amidst the vast plains of Russia. The last man to wear the 
crown with the double eagle of Constantinople, Tsar Nicholas, 
was murdered only the other day, so to speak. His body was 
thrown into a well. His son and his daughters were all killed. 
All his ancient rights and prerogatives were abolished, and the 
church was reduced to the position which it had held in Rome 
before the days of Constantine. 

The eastern church however fared very differently, as we 
shall see in the next chapter when the whole Christian world is 
going to be threatened with destruction by the rival creed of 
an Arab camel-driver. 



MOHAMMED 



AHMED, THE CAMEL-DRIVER, WHO BECAME 
THE PROPHET OF THE ARABIAN DESERT, 
AND WHOSE FOLLOWERS ALMOST CON- 
QUERED THE ENTIRE KNOWN WORLD 
FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF ALLAH, THE 
ONLY TRUE GOD 

Since ^he days of Carthage and Hannibal we have said 
nothing of the Semitic people. You will remember how they 
filled all the chapters devoted to the story of the Ancient World. 
The Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Jews, 
the Arameans, the Chaldeans, all of them Semites, had been 
the rulers of western Asia for thirty or forty centuries. They 
had been conquered by the Indo-European Persians who had 
come from the east and by the Indo-European Greeks who 
had come from the west. A hundred years after the death of 
Alexander the Great, Carthage, a colony of Semitic Phoeni- 
cians, had fought the Indo-European Romans for the mastery 
of the Mediterranean. Carthage had been defeated and de- 
stroyed and for eight hundred years the Romans had been mas- 
ters of the world. In the seventh century, however, another 
Semitic tribe appeared upon the scene and challenged the 
power of the west. They were the Arabs, peaceful shepherds 
who had roamed through the desert since the beginning of time 
without showing any signs of imperial ambitions. 

Then they listened to Mohammed, mounted their horses and 

138 



MOHAMMED 



139 



in less than a century they had pushed to the heart of Europe 
and proclaimed the glories of Allah, "the only God," and 
Mohammed, "the prophet of the only God," to the frightened 
peasants of France. 

The story of Ahmed, the son of Abdallah and Aminah, 
(usually known as Mohammed, or "he who will be praised,") 
reads like a chapter in the "Thousand and One Nights." He 
was a camel-driver, born in Mecca. He seems to have been an 
epileptic and he suffered from spells of unconsciousness when 
he dreamed strange dreams and heard the voice of the angel 
Gabriel, whose words were afterwards written down in a book 
called the Koran. His work as a caravan leader carried him 
all over Arabia and he was constantly falling in with Jewish 
merchants and with Christian traders, and he came to see that 
the worship of a single God was a very excellent thing. His 
own people, the Arabs, still revered queer stones and trunks 
of trees as their ancestors had done, tens of thousands of 
years before. In Mecca, their holy city, stood a little square 
building, the Kaaba, full of idols and strange odds and ends 
of Hoo-doo worship. 

Mohammed decided to be the 
Moses of the Arab peoj^le. He 
could not well be a prophet and 
a camel-driver at the same time. 
So he made himself independenf 
by marrying his employer, the 
rich widow Chadija. Then he 
told his neighbours in Mecca 
that he was the long-expected 
prophet sent by Allah to save the 
world. The neighbours laughed 
most heartily and when Moham- 
med continued to annoy them 
with his speeches they decided to 
kill him. They regarded him as 

a lunatic and a public bore who deserved no mercy. Mohammed 
heard of the plot and in the dark of night he fled to Medina 




THE FLIGHT OF MOHAMMED 



140 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

together with Abu Bekr, his trusted pupil. This happened 
in the year 622. It is the most important date in Mohammedan 
history and is known as the Hegira — the year of the Great 
Fhght. 

In Medina, Mohammed, who was a stranger, found it easier 
to proclaim himself a prophet than in his home city, where 
every one had known him as a simple camel-driver. Soon he 
wa^s surrounded by an increasing number of followers, or 
Moslems, who accepted the Islam, "the submission to the will 
of God," which Mohammed praised as the highest of all virtues. 
For seven years he preached to the people of Medina. Then 
he beheved himself strong enough to begin a campaign against 
his former neighbours who had dared to sneer at him and his 
Holy Mission in his old camel-driving days. At the head of 
an army of Medinese he marched across the desert. His fol- 
lowers took Mecca without great difficulty, and having slaught- 
ered a number of the inhabitants, they found it quite easy to 
convince the others that Mohammed was really a great prophet. 

From that time on until the year of his death, Mohammed 
was fortunate in everything he undertook. 

There are two reasons for the success of Islam. In the 
first place, the creed which Mohammed taught to his followers 
was very simple. The disciples were told that they must love 
Allah, the Ruler of the World, the Merciful and Compas- 
sionate. They must honour and obey their parents. They 
were warned against dishonesty in dealing with their neigh- 
bours and were admonished to be humble and charitable, to the 
poor and to the sick. Finally they were ordered to abstain 
from strong drink and to be very frugal in what they ate. That 
was all. There were no priests, who acted as shepherds of 
their flocks and asked that they be supported at the common 
expense. The Mohammedan churches or mosques were merely 
large stone halls without benches or pictures, where the faith- 
ful could gather (if they felt so inclined) to read and discuss 
chapters from the Koran, the Holy Book. But the average 
Mohammedan carried his religion with him and never felt 
himself hemmed in by the restrictions and regulations of an 



MOHAMMED 141 

established church. Five times a day he turned his face towards 
Mecca, the Holy City, and said a simple prayer. For the 
rest of the time he let Allah rule the world as he saw fit and 
accepted whatever fate brought him with patient resignation. 

Of course such an attitude towards life did not encourage 
the Faithful to go forth and invent electrical machinery or 
bother about railroads and steamship lines. But it gave every 
Mohammedan a certain amount of contentment. It bade 
him be at peace with himself and with the world in which he 
lived and that was a very good thing. 

The second reason which explains the success of the Mos- 
lems in their warfare upon the Christians, had to do with the 
conduct of those Mohammedan soldiers who went forth to do 
battle for the true faith. The Prophet promised that those 
who fell, facing the enemy, would go directly to Heaven. 
This made sudden death in the field preferable to a long but 
dreary existence upon this earth. It gave the Mohammedans 
an enormous advantage over the Crusaders who were in con- 
stant dread of a dark hereafter, and who stuck to the good 
things of this world as long as they possibly could. Incident- 
ally it explains why even to-day Moslem soldiers will charge 
into the fire of European machine guns quite indifferent to 
the fate that awaits them and why they are such dangerous 
and persistent enemies. 

Having put his religious house in order, Mohammed now 
began to enjoy his jDOwer as the undisputed ruler of a large 
number of Arab tribes. But success has been the undoing of 
a large number of men who were great in the days of adversity. 
He tried to gain the good will of the rich people by a num- 
ber of regulations which could appeal to those of wealth. 
He allowed the Faithful to have four wives. As one wife 
was a costly investment in those olden days when brides were 
bought directly from the parents, four wives became a positive 
luxury except to those who possessed camels and dromedaries 
and date orchards beyond the dreams of avarice. A religion 
which at first had been meant for the hardy hunters of the 
high skied desert was gradually transformed to suit the needs 



142 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

of the smug merchants who lived in the bazaars of the cities. 
It was a regrettable change from the original program and it 
did very little good to the cause of Mohammedanism. As for 
the prophet himself, he went on preaching the truth of Allah 
and proclaiming new rules of conduct until he died, quite 
suddenly, of a fever on June the seventh of the year 632. 

His successor as Caliph (or leader) of the Moslems was 
his father-in-law, Abu-Bekr, who had shared the early dangers 
of the prophet's life. Two years later, Abu-Bekr died and 
Omar ibn Al-Khattab followed him. In less than ten years 
he conquered Egypt, Persia, Phoenicia, Syria and Palestine 
and made Damascus the capital of the first Mohammedan world 
empire. 

Omar was succeeded by Ali, the husband of Mohammed's 
daughter, Fatima, but a quarrel broke out upon a point of 
Moslem doctrine and Ali was murdered. After his death, 
the caliphate was made hereditary and the leaders of the faith- 
ful who had begun their career as the spiritual head of a re- 
ligious sect became the rulers of a vast empire. They built 
a new city on the shores of the Euphrates, near the ruins of 
Babylon and called it Bagdad, and organising the Arab horse- 
men into regiments of cavalry, they set forth to bring the 
happiness of their Moslem faith to all unbelievers. In the 
year 700 a.d. a Mohammedan general by the name of Tarik 
crossed the old gates of Hercules and reached the high rock 
on the European side which he called the Gibel-al-tarik, the 
Hill of Tarik or Gibraltar. 

Eleven years later in the battle of Xeres de la Frontera, 
he defeated the king of the Visigoths and then the Moslem 
army moved northward and following the route of Hannibal, 
they crossed the passes of the Pyrenees. They defeated the 
Duke of Aquitania, who tried to halt them near Bor- 
deaux, and marched upon Paris. But in the year 732 (one 
hundred years after the death of the prophet,) they were 
beaten in a battle between Tours and Poitiers. On that 
day, Charles Martel (Charles with the Hammer) the Prank- 
ish chieftain, saved Europe from a Mohammedan con- 



MOHAMMED 



143 



quest. He drove the Moslems out of France, but they main- 
tained themselves in Spain where Abd-ar-Rahman founded the 
Caliphate of Cordova, which became the greatest centre of 
science and art of mediaeval Europe. 

This Moorish kingdom, so-called because the people came 
from Mauretania in Morocco, lasted seven centuries. It was 
only after the capture of Grenada, the last Moslem stronghold, 




THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT 



in the year 1492, that Columbus received the royal grant which 
allowed him to go upon a voyage of discovery. The Moham- 
medans soon regained their strength in the new conquests 
which they made in Asia and Africa and to-day there are as 
many followers of Mohammed as there are of Christ. 



CHARLEMAGNE 



HOW CHARLEMAGNE, THE KING OF THE 
FRANKS, CAME TO BEAR THE TITLE OF 
EMPEROR AND TRIED TO REVIVE THE OLD 
IDEAL OF WORLD-EMPIRE 

The battle of Poitiers had saved Europe from the Mo- 
hammedans. But the enemy within — the hopeless disorder 
which had followed the disappearance of the Roman police 
officer — that enemy remained. It is true that the new converts 
of the Christian faith in Northern Europe felt a deep respect 
for the mighty Bishop of Rome. But that poor bishop did 
not feel any too safe when he looked toward the distant moun- 
tains. Heaven knew what fresh hordes of barbarians were 
ready to cross the Alps and begin a new attack on Rome. It 
was necessary — very necessary — for the spiritual head of the 
world to find an ally with a strong sword and a powerful 
fist who was willing to defend His Holiness in case of dan- 
ger. 

And so the Popes, who were not only very holy but 
also very practical, cast about for a friend, and presently 
they made overtures to the most promising of the Germanic 
tribes who had occupied north-western Europe after the fall 
of Rome. They were called the Franks. One of their earliest 
kings, called Merovech, had helped the Romans in the battle of 
the Catalaunian fields in the year 451 when they defeated the 
Huns. His descendants, the Merovingians, had continued to 

144 



CHARLEMAGNE 145 

take little bits of imperial territory until the year 486 when 
king Clovis (the old French word for "Louis") felt himself 
strong enough to beat the Romans in the open. But his 
descendants were weak men who left the affairs of state to 
their Prime minister, the "Major Domus" or Master of the 
Palace. 

Pepin the Short, the son of the famous Charles Martel, 
who succeeded his father as Master of the Palace, hardly 
knew how to handle the situation. His royal master was a 
devout theologian, without any interest in politics. Pepin 
asked the Pope for advice. The Pope who was a practical 
person answered that the "power in the state belonged to him 
who was actually possessed of it." Pepin took the hint. He 
persuaded Childeric, the last of the Merovingians to become 
a monk and then made himself king with the approval of the 
other Germanic chieftains. But this did not satisfy the shrewd 
Pepin. He wanted to be something more than a barbarian 
chieftain. He staged an elaborate ceremony at which Boniface, 
the great missionary of the European northwest, anointed 
him and made him a "King by the grace of God." It was 
easy to slip those words, "Dei gratia," into the coronation 
service. It took almost fifteen hundred years to get them out 
again. 

Pepin was sincerely grateful for this kindness on the part 
of the church. He made two expeditions to Italy to defend 
the Pope against his enemies. He took Ravenna and several 
other cities away from the Longobards and presented them 
to His Holiness, who incorporated these new domains into 
the so-called Papal State, which remained an independent 
country until half a century ago. 

After Pepin's death, the relations between Rome and Aix- 
la-Chapelle or Nymwegen or Ingelheim, (the Prankish Kings 
did not have one official residence, but travelled from place to 
place with all their ministers and court officers,) became more 
and more cordial. Finally the Pope and the King took a step 
which was to influence the history of Europe in a most pro- 
found way. 

Charles, commonly known as Carolus Magnus or Char- 



146 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

lemagne, succeeded Pepin in the year 768. He had conquered 
the land of the Saxons in eastern Germany and had 
built towns and monasteries all over the greater part of north- 
ern Europe. At the request of certain enemies of Abd-ar- 
Rahman, he had invaded Spain to fight the Moors. But in 
the Pyrenees he had been attacked by the wild Basques and 
had been forced to retire. It was upon this occasion that Ro- 
land, the great Margrave of Breton, showed what a Prankish 
chieftain of those early days meant when he promised to be 
faithful to his King, and gave his life and that of his trusted 
followers to safeguard the retreat of the royal army. 

During the last ten years of the eighth century, however, 
Charles was obliged to devote himself exclusively to affairs of 
the South. The Pope, Leo III, had been attacked by a band 
of Roman rowdies and had been left for dead in the street. 
Some kind people had bandaged his wounds and had helped 
him to escape to the camp of Charles, where he asked for 
help. An army of Franks soon restored quiet and carried Leo 
back to the Lateran Palace which ever since the days of Con- 
stantine, had been the home of the Pope. That was in Decem- 
ber of the year 799. On Christmas day of the next year, 
Charlemagne, who was staying in Rome, attended the service 
in the ancient church of St. Peter. When he arose from prayer, 
the Pope placed a crown upon his head, called him Emperor of 
the Romans and hailed him once more with the title of "Augus- 
tus" which had not been heard for hundreds of years. 

Once more Northern Europe was part of a Roman Empire, 
but the dignity was held by a German chieftain who could 
read just a little and never learned to write. But he could 
fight and for a short while there was order and even the rival 
emperor in Constantinople sent a letter of approval to his 
"dear Brother." 

Unfortunately this splendid old man died in the year 814. 
His sons and his grandsons at once began to fight for the 
largest share of the imperial inheritance. Twice the Caro- 
lingian lands were divided, by the treaties of Verdun in the 
year 843 and by the treaty of Mersen-on-the-Meuse in the 



CHARLEMAGNE 




THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE OF GERMAN NATIONALITY 



148 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

year 870. The latter treaty divided the entire Frankish King- 
dom into two parts. Charles the Bold received the western 
half. It contained the old Roman province called Gaul where 
the language of the people had become thoroughly romanized. 
The Franks soon learned to speak this J.anguage and this 
accounts for the strange fact that a purely Germanic land 
like France should speak a Latin tongue. 

The other grandson got the eastern part, the land which 
the Romans had called Germania. Those inhospitable re- 
gions had never been part of the old Empire. Augustus had 
tried to conquer this "far east," but his legions had been annihi- 
lated in the Teutoburg Wood in the year 9 and the people had 
never been influenced by the higher Roman civilisation. They 
spoke the popular Germanic tongue. The Teuton word for 
"people" was "thiot." The Christian missionaries therefore 
called the German language the "lingua theotisca" or the 
"lingua teutisca," the "popular dialect" and this word "teu- 
tisca" was changed into "Deutsch" which accounts for the name 
"Deutschland." 

As for the famous Imperial Crown, it very soon slipped 
off the heads of the Carolingian successors and rolled back onto 
the Italian plain, where it became a sort of plaything of a 
number of little potentates who stole the crown from each other 
amidst much bloodshed and wore it (with or without the per- 
mission of the Pope) until it was the turn of some more am- 
bitious neighbour. The Pope, once more sorely beset by his 
enemies, sent north for help. He did not appeal to the ruler 
of the west-Frankish kingdom, this time. His messengers 
crossed the Alps and addressed themselves to Otto, a Saxon 
Prince who was recognised as the greatest chieftain of the 
different Germanic tribes. 

Otto, who shared his people's affection for the blue skies 
and the gay and beautiful people of the Italian peninsula, 
hastened to the rescue. In return for his services, the Pope, 
Leo VIII, made Otto "Emperor," and the eastern half of 
Charles' old kingdom was henceforth known as the "Holy 
Roman Empire of the German Nation." 




THE MOUNTAIX-PASS 



CHARLEMAGNE 149 

This strange political creation managed to live to the ripe 
old age of eight hundred and thirty-nine years. In the year 
1801, (during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson,) it was 
most unceremoniously relegated to the historical scrapheap. 
The brutal fellow who destroyed the old Germanic Empire was 
the son of a Corsican notary-public who had made a brilHant 
career in the service of the French Republic. He was ruler 
of Europe by the grace of his famous Guard Regiments, but 
he desired to be something more. He sent to Rome for the 
Pope and the Pope came and stood by while General Napoleon 
placed the imperial crown upon his own head and proclaimed 
himself heir to the tradition of Charlemagne. For history is 
like life. The more things change, the more they remain 
the same. 



WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE TENTH CENTURY 
PRAYED THE LORD TO PROTECT THEM 
FROM THE FURY OF THE NORSEMEN 

In the third and fourth centuries, the Germanic tribes of 
central Europe had broken through the defences of the Em- 
pire that they might plunder Rome and live on the fat of the 
land. In the eighth century it became the turn of the Germans 
to be the "plundered-ones." They did not like this at all, even 
if their enemies were their first cousins, the Norsemen, who 
lived in Denmark and Sweden and Norway. 

What forced these hardy sailors to turn pirate we do not 
know, but once they had discovered the advantages and pleas- 
ures of a buccaneering career there was no one who could stop 
them. They would suddenly descend upon a peaceful Prank- 
ish or Frisian village, situated on the mouth of a river. They 
would kill all the men and steal all the women. Then they 
would sail away in their fast-sailing ships and when the sol- 
diers of the king or emperor arrived upon the scene, the rob- 
bers were gone and nothing remained but a few smouldering 
ruins. 

During the days of disorder which followed the death of 
Charlemagne, the Northmen developed great activity. Their 
fleets made raids upon every country and their sailors estab- 
lished small independent kingdoms along the coast of Holland 
and France and England and Germany, and they even found 

150 



THE NORSEMEN 



1'51 



their way into Italy. The Northmen were very inteUigent. 
They soon learned to speak the language of their subjects and 
gave up the uncivilised ways of the early Vikings (or Sea- 
Kings) who had been very picturesque but also very unwashed 
and terribly cruel. 




THE HOME OF THE NORSEMEN 



Early in the tenth century a Viking by the name of RoUo 
had repeatedly attacked the coast of France. The king of 
France, too weak to resist these northern robbers, tried to 
bribe them into "being good." He offered them the province 
of Normandy, if they would promise to stop bothering the rest 
of his domains. Rollo accepted this bargain and became "Duke 
of Normandy." 



152 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 




THE NORSEMEN GO TO RUSSIA 

But the passion of conquest was strong in the blood of his 
children. Across the channel, only a few hours away from the 
European mainland, they could see the white cliffs and the 
green fields of England. Poor England had passed through 
difficult days. For two hundred years it had been a Roman 
colony. After the Romans left, it had been conquered by the 




THE NORMANS LOOK ACROSS THE CHANNEL 



THE NORSEMEN 



153 




154 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Angles and the Saxons, two German tribes from Schleswig. 
Next the Danes had taken the greater part of the country 
and had established the kingdom of Cnut. The Danes had 
been driven away and now (it was early in the eleventh cen- 
tury) another Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, was on the 
throne. But Edward was not expected to live long and he 
had no children. The circumstances favoured the ambitious 
dukes of Normandy. 

In 1066 Edward died. Immediately William of Nor- 
mandy crossed the channel, defeated and killed Harold of 
Wessex (who had taken the crown) at the battle of Hastings, 
and proclaimed himself king of England. 

In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a 
German chieftain had become a Roman Emperor. Now in 
the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognised 
as King of England. 

Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth 
of history is so much more interesting and entertaining? 



FEUDALISM 



HOW CENTRAL EUROPE, ATTACKED FROM 
THREE SIDES, BECAME AN ARMED CAMP 
AND WHY EUROPE WOULD HAVE PER- 
ISHED WITHOUT THOSE PROFESSIONAL 
SOLDIERS AND ADMINISTRATORS WHO 
WERE PART OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 

The following, then, is the state of Europe in the year one 
thousand, when most people were so unhappy that they wel- 
comed the prophecy foretelling the approaching end of the 
world and rushed to the monasteries, tlmt the Day of Judge- 
ment might find them engaged upon dew Mt duties. 

At an unknown date, the Germanic tribes had left their old 
home in Asia and had moved westward into Europe. By 
sheer pressure of numbers they had forced their way into the 
Roman Empire. They had destroyed the great western em- 
pire, but the eastern part, being oiF the main route of the 
great migrations, had managed to survive and feebly continued 
the traditions of Rome's ancient glory. 

During the days of disorder which had followed, (the true 
"dark ages" of history, the sixth and seventh centuries of our 
era,) the German tribes had been persuaded to accept the 
Christian religion and had recognised the Bishop of Rome 
as the Pope or spiritual head of the world. In the ninth cen- 
tury, the organising genius of Charlemagne had revived the 
Roman Empire and had united the greater part of western 

155 



156 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Europe into a single state. During the tenth century this 
empire had gone to pieces. The western part had become a 
separate kingdom, France. The eastern half was known as the 
Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, and the rulers of 
this federation of states then pretended that they were the 
direct heirs of Caesar and Augustus. 

Unfortunately the power of the kings of France did not 
stretch beyond the moat of their royal residence, while the 
Holy Roman Emperor was openly defied by his powerful 
subjects whenever it suited their fancy or their profit. 

To increase the misery of the masses of the people, the tri- 
angle of western Europe (look at page 128, please) was for ever 
exposed to attacks from three sides. On the south lived the 
ever dangerous Mohammedans. The western coast was ravaged 
by the Northmen. The eastern frontier (defenceless except 
for the short stretch of the Carpathian mountains) was at 
the mercy of hordes of Huns, Hungarians, Slavs and Tartars. 

The peace of Rome was a thing of the remote past, a dream 
of the "Good Old Days" that were gone for ever. It was a 
question of "fight or die," and quite naturally people preferred 
to fight. Forced by circumstances, Europe became an armed 
camp and there was f^ demand for strong leadership. Both 
King and Emperor w-^e far away. The frontiersmen (and 
most of Europe in the year 1000 was "frontier") must help 
themselves. They willingly submitted to the representatives 
of the king who were sent to administer the outlying dis- 
tricts, provided they could protect them against their enemies. 

Soon central Europe was dotted with small principalities, 
each one ruled by a duke or a count or a baron or a bishop, as 
the case might be, and organised as a fighting unit. These 
dukes and counts and barons had sworn to be faithful to the 
king who had given them their "feudum" (hence our word 
"feudal,") in return for their loyal services and a certain 
amount of taxes. But travel in those days was slow and the 
means of communication were exceedingly poor. The royal 
or imperial administrators therefore enjoyed great independ- 
ence, and within the boundaries of their own province they 




THE XORSEMEX ARE COMING 



FEUDALISM 157 

assumed most of the rights which in truth belonged to the king. 

But you would make a mistake if you supposed that the 
people of the eleventh century objected to this form of gov- 
ernment. They supported Feudalism because it was a very 
practical and necessary institution. Their Lord and Master 
usually lived in a big stone house erected on the top of a steep 
rock or built between deep moats, but within sight of his 
subjects. In case of danger the subjects found shelter behind 
the walls of the baronial stronghold. That is why they tried 
to live as near the castle as possible and it accounts for the 
many European cities which began their career around a feudal 
fortress. 

But the knight of the early middle ages was much more 
than a professional soldier. He was the civil servant of that 
day. He was the judge of his community and he was the 
chief of police. He caught the highwaymen and protected 
the wandering pedlars who were the merchants of the eleventh 
century. He looked after the dikes so that the countryside 
should not be flooded (just as the first noblemen had done 
in the valley of the Nile four thousand years before). He 
encouraged the Troubadours who wandered from place to place 
telling the stories of the ancient heroes who had fought in the 
great wars of the migrations. Besides, he protected the churches 
and the monasteries within his territory, and although he could 
neither read nor write, (it was considered unmanly to know 
such things,) he employed a number of priests who kept his 
accounts and who registered the marriages and the births and 
the deaths which occurred within the baronial or ducal do- 
mains. 

In the fifteenth century the kings once more became strong 
enough to exercise those powers which belonged to them because 
they were "anointed of God." Then the feudal knights lost 
their former independence. Reduced to the rank of country 
squires, they no longer filled a need and soon they became a 
nuisance. But Europe would have perished without the "feu- 
dal system" of the dark ages. There were many bad knights 
as there are many bad people to-day. But generally speaking, 



168 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

the rough-fisted barons of the twelfth and thirteenth century 
were hard-working administrators who rendered a most useful 
service to the cause of progress. During that era the noble 
torch of learning and art which had illuminated the world of 
the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans was burning 
very low. Without the knights and their good friends, the 
monks, civilisation would have been extinguished entirely, and 
the human race would have been forced to begin once more 
where the cave-man had left off. 



CHIVALRY 



CHIVALRY 

It was quite natural that the professional fighting-men of 
the Middle Ages should try to establish some sort of organisa- 
tion for their mutual benefit aftd protection. Out of this need 
for close organisation, Knighthood or Chivalry was born. 

We know very little about the origins of Knighthood. But 
as the system developed, it gave the world something which it 
needed very badly — a definite rule of conduct which softened 
the barbarous customs of that day and made life more livable 
than it had been during the five hundred years of the Dark 
Ages. It was not an easy task to civilise the rough frontiers- 
men who had spent most of their time fighting Mohammedans 
and Huns and Norsemen. Often they were guilty of back- 
sliding, and having vowed all sorts of oaths about mercy and 
charity in the morning, they would murder all their prisoners 
before evening. But progress is ever the result of slow and 
ceaseless labour, and finally the most unscrupulous of knights 
was forced to obey the rules of his "class" or suffer the con- 
sequences. 

These rules were different in the various parts of Europe, 
but they all made much of "service" and "loyalty to duty." The 
Middle Ages regarded service as something very noble and 
beautiful. It was no disgrace to be a servant, provided you 
were a good servant and did not slacken on the job. As for 
loyalty, at a time when life depended upon the faithful per- 

159 



160 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

formance of many unpleasant duties, it was the chief virtue 
of the fighting man. 

A young knight therefore was asked to swear that he would 
be faithful as a servant to God and as a servant to his King. 
Furthermore, he promised to be generous to those whose need 
was greater than his own. He pledged his word that he would 
be humble in his personal behaviour and would never boast of 
his own accomplishments and that he would be a friend of all 
those who suffered, (with the exception of the Mohammedans, 
whom he was expected to kill on sight ) . 

Around these vows, which were merely the Ten Command- 
ments expressed in terms which the people of the Middle Ages 
could understand, there developed a complicated system of 
manners and outward behaviour. The knights tried to model 
their own lives after the example of those heroes of Arthur's 
Round Table and Charlemagne's court of whom the Trouba- 
dours had told them and of whom you may read in many de- 
lightful books which are enumerated at the end of this volume. 
They hoped that they might prove as brave as Lancelot and 
as faithful as Roland. They carried themselves with dignity 
and they spoke careful and gracious words that they might be 
known as True Knights, however humble the cut of their coat 
or the size of their purse. 

In this way the order of Knighthood became a school of those 
good manners which are the oil of the social machinery. Chiv- 
alry came to mean courtesy and the feudal castle showed the 
rest of the world what clothes to wear, how to eat, how to ask 
a lady for a dance and the thousand and one little things of 
every-day behaviour which help to make life interesting and 
agreeable. 

Like all human institutions. Knighthood was doomed to 
perish as soon as it had outlived its usefulness. 

The crusades, about which one of the next chapters tells, 
were followed by a great revival of trade. Cities grew over- 
night. The townspeople became rich, hired good school teach- 
ers and soon were the equals of the knights. The invention 
of gun-powder deprived the heavily armed "Chevalier" of his 



CHIVALRY 161 

former advantage and the use of mercenaries made it impos- 
sible to conduct a battle with the delicate niceties of a chess 
tournament. The knight became superfluous. Soon he be- 
came a ridiculous figure, with his devotion to ideals that had no 
longer any practical value. It was said that the noble Don 
Quixote de la Mancha had been the last of the true knights. 
After his death, his trusted sword and his armour were sold 
to pay his debts. 

But somehow or other that sword seems to have fallen into 
the hands of a number of men. Washington carried it during 
the hopeless days of Valley Forge. It was the only defence 
of Gordon, when he had refused to desert the people who had 
been entrusted to his care, and stayed to meet his death in the 
besieged fortress of Khartoum. 

And I am not quite sure but that it proved of invaluable 
strength in winning the Great War. 



POPE vs, EMPEROR 



THE STRANGE DOUBLE LOYALTY OF THE 
PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES AND HOW 
IT LED TO ENDLESS QUARRELS BETWEEN 
THE POPES AND THE HOLY ROMAN EM- 
PERORS 

It is very difficult to understand the people of by-gone 
ages. Your own grandfather, whom you see every day, is a 
mysterious being who lives in a different world of ideas and 
clothes and manners. I am now telling you the story of some 
of your gi'andfathers who are twenty-five generations removed, 
and I do not expect you to catch the meaning of what I write 
without re-reading this chapter a number of times. 

The average man of the Middle Ages hved a very simple 
and uneventful life. Even if he was a free citizen, able to 
come and go at will, he rarely left his own neighbourhood. 
There were no printed books and only a few manuscripts. 
Here and there, a small band of industrious monks taught 
reading and writing and some arithmetic. But science and his- 
tory and geography lay buried beneath the ruins of Greece and 
Rome. 

Whatever people knew about the past they had learned by 
listening to stories and legends. Such information, which goes 
from father to son, is often slightly incorrect in details, but 
it will preserve the main facts of history with astonishing accu- 
racy. After more than two thousand years, the mothers of 
India still frighten their naughty children by telhng them that 

162 



POPE vs. EMPEROR 163 

"Iskander will get them," and Iskander is none other than 
Alexander the Great, who visited India in the year 330 before 
the birth of Christ, but whose story has lived through all these 
ages. 

The people of the early Middle Ages never saw a text- 
book of Roman historj'-. They were ignorant of many things 
which every school-boy to-day knows before he has entered 
the third grade. But the Roman Empire, which is merely a 
name to you, was to them something very much alive. They 
felt it. They willingly recognised the Pope as their spiritual 
leader because he lived in Rome and represented the idea of 
the Roman super-power. And they were profoundly grate- 
ful when Charlemagne, and afterwards Otto the Great, re- 
vived the idea of a world-empire and created the Holy Roman 
Eimpire, that the world might again be as it always had been. 

But the fact that there were two different heirs to the 
Roman tradition placed the faithful burghers of the Middle 
Ages in a difficult position. The theory behind the medieeval 
political system was both sound and simple. While the worldly 
master (the emperor) looked after the physical well-being of 
his subjects, the spiritual master (the Pope) guarded their 
souls. 

In practice, however, the system worked very badly. The 
Emperor invariably tried to interfere with the affairs of the 
church and the Pope retaliated and told the Emperor how 
he should rule his domains. Then they told each other to mind 
their own business in very unceremonious language and the 
inevitable end was war. 

Under those circumstances, what were the people to do? 
A good Christian obeyed both the Pope and his King. But 
the Pope and the Emperor were enemies. Which side should 
a dutiful subject and an equally dutiful Christian take? 

It was never easy to give the correct answer. When the 
Emperor happened to be a man of energy and was sufficiently 
well provided with money to organise an army, he was very 
apt to cross the Alps and march on Rome, besiege the Pope 



164 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

in his own palace if need be, and force His Holiness to obey 
the imperial instructions or suffer the consequences. 

But more frequently the Pope was the stronger. Then the 
Emperor or the King together with all his subjects was excom- 
municated. This meant that all churches were closed, that no 
one could be baptised, that no dying man could be given abso- 
lution — in short, that half of the functions of mediaeval govern- 
ment came to an end. 

More than that, the people were absolved from their oath of 
loyalty to their sovereign and were urged to rebel against their 
master. But if they followed this advice of the distant Pope 
and were caught, they were hanged by their near-by Lege 
Lord and that too was very unpleasant. 

Indeed, the poor fellows were in a difficult position and 
none fared worse than those who lived during the latter half of 
the eleventh century, when the Emperor Henry IV of Ger- 
many and Pope Gregory VII fought a two-roimd battle which 
decided nothing and upset the peace of Europe for almost fifty 
years. 

In the middle of the eleventh century there had been a 
strong movement for reform in the church. The election of the 
Popes, thus far, had been a most irregular affair. It was to the 
advantage of the Holy Roman Emperors to have a well-dis- 
posed priest elected to the Holy See. They frequently came 
to Rome at the time of election and used their influence for 
the benefit of one of their friends. 

In the year 1059 this had been changed. By a decree of 
Pope Nicholas II the principal priests and deacons of the 
churches in and around Rome were organised into the so- 
called College of Cardinals, and this gathering of prominent 
churchmen (the word "Cardinal" meant principal) was given 
the exclusive power of electing the future Popes. 

In the year 1073 the College of Cardinals elected a priest 
by the name of Hildebrand, the son of very simple parents in 
Tuscany, as Pope, and he took the name of Gregory VII. 
His energy was unbounded. His behef in the supreme powers 
of his Holy Office was built upon a granite rock of conviction 




THE CASTLE 



POPE vs. EMPEROR 



165 



and courage. In the mind of Gregory, the Pope was not only 
the absolute head of the Christian church, but also the highest 
Court of Appeal in all worldly matters. The Pope who had 
elevated simple German princes to the dignity of Emperor 
could depose them at will. He could veto any law passed by 
duke or king or emperor, but whosoever should question a 
papal decree, let him beware, for the punishment would be 
swift and merciless. 

Gregory sent ambassadors to all the European courts to 
inform the potentates of Europe of his new laws and asked 
them to take due notice of their contents. William the Con- 
queror promised to be good, but Henry IV, who since the age 
of six had been fighting with his subjects, had no intention of 
submitting to the Papal will. He called together a college of 
German bishops, accused Gregory of every crime under the 
sun and then had him deposed by the council of Worms. 

The Pope answered with excommunication and a demand 
that the German princes rid themselves of their unworthy ruler. 
The German princes, only too happy to be rid of Henry, asked 
the Pope to come to Augsburg and help them elect a new Em- 
peror. 

Gregory left Rome and 
travelled northward. Henry, 
who was no fool, appreciated 
the danger of his position. At 
all costs he must make peace 
with the Pope, and he must do 
it at once. In the midst of win- 
ter he crossed the Alps and 
hastened to Canossa where the 
Pope had stopped for a short 
rest. Three long days, from 
the 25th to the 28th of January 
of the year 1077, Henry, 
dressed as a penitent pilgrim 
(but with a warm sweater un- 




HENRY IV AT CANOSSA 



166 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

derneath his monkish garb), waited outside the gates of the 
castle of Canossa. Then he was allowed to enter and was 
pardoned for his sins. But the repentance did not last long. 
As soon as Henry had returned to Germany, he behaved 
exactly as before. Again he was excommunicated. For the 
second time a council of German bishops deposed Greg- 
ory, but this time, when Henry crossed the Alps he was at 
the head of a large army, besieged Rome and forced Gregory 
to retire to Salerno, where he died in exile. This first violent 
outbreak decided nothing. As soon as Henry was back in 
Germany, the struggle between Pope and Emperor was con- 
tinued. 

The Hohenstaufen family which got hold of the Imperial 
German Throne shortly afterwards, were even more independ- 
ent than their predecessors. Gregory had claimed that the 
Popes were superior to all kings because they (the Popes) at 
the Day of Judgement would be responsible for the behaviour 
of all the sheep of their flock, and in the eyes of God, a king 
was one of that faithful herd. 

Frederick of Hohenstaufen, commonly known as Barba- 
rossa or Red Beard, set up the counter-claim that the Empire 
had been bestowed upon his predecessor "by God himself" 
and as the Empire included Italy and Rome, he began a cam- 
paign which was to add these "lost provinces" to the northern 
country. Barbarossa was accidentally drowned in Asia Minor 
during the second Crusade, but his son Frederick II, a brilliant 
young man who in his youth had been exposed to the civilisa- 
tion of the Mohammedans of Sicily, continued the war. The 
Popes accused him of heresy. It is true that Frederick seems 
to have felt a deep and serious contempt for the rough Chris- 
tian world of the North, for the boorish German Knights and 
the intriguing Italian priests. But he held his tongue, went 
on a Crusade and took Jerusalem from the infidel and was 
duly crowned as King of the Holy City. Even this act did not 
placate the Popes. They deposed Frederick and gave his 
Italian possessions to Charles of Anjou, the brother of that 
King Louis of France who became famous as Saint Louis. 



POPE vs. EMPEROR 167 

This led to more warfare. Conrad V, the son of Conrad IV, 
and the last of the Hohenstauf ens, tried to regain the kingdom, 
and was defeated and decapitated at Naples. But twenty years 
later, the French who had made themselves thoroughly un- 
popular in Sicily were all murdered during the so-called Sici- 
lian Vespers, and so it went. 

The quarrel between the Popes and the Emperors was 
never settled, but after a while the two enemies learned to 
leave each other alone. 

In the year 1273, Rudolph of Hapsburg was elected Em- 
peror. He did not take the trouble to go to Rome to be 
crowned. The Popes did not object and in turn they kept 
away from Germany. This meant peace but two entire cen- 
turies which might have been used for the purpose of internal 
organisation had been wasted in useless warfare. 

It is an ill wind however that bloweth no good to some one. 
The little cities of Italy, by a process of careful balancing, 
had managed to increase their power and their independence 
at the expense of both Emperors and Popes. When the rush 
for the Holy Land began, they were able to handle the trans- 
portation problem of the thousands of eager pilgrims who were 
clamoring for passage, and at the end of the Crusades they 
had built themselves such strong defences of brick and of gold 
that they could defy Pope and Emperor with equal indif- 
ference. 

Church and State fought each other and a third party — the 
mediseval city — ran away with the spoils. 



THE CRUSADES 



BUT ALL THESE DIFFERENT QUARRELS 
WERE FORGOTTEN WHEN THE TURKS 
TOOK THE HOLY LAND, DESECRATED THE 
HOLY PLACES AND INTERFERED SERI- 
OUSLY WITH THE TRADE FROM EAST TO 
WEST. EUROPE WENT CRUSADING 

During three centuries there had been peace between Chris- 
tians and Moslems except in Spain and in the eastern Roman 
Empire, the two states defending the gateways of Em-ope. 
The Mohammedans having conquered Syria in the seventh 
century were in possession of the Holy Land. But they re- 
garded Jesus as a great prophet (though not quite as great 
as Mohammed), and they did not interfere with the pilgrims 
who wished to pray in the church which Saint Helena, the 
mother of the Emperor Constantine, had built on the spot of 
the Holy Grave. But early in the eleventh century, a Tartar 
tribe from the wilds of Asia, called the Seljuks or Turks, 
became masters of the Mohammedan state in eastern Asia and 
then the period of tolerance came to an end. The Turks took 
all of Asia Minor away from the eastern Roman Emperors 
and they made an end to the trade between east and west. 

Alexis, the Emperor, who rarely saw anything of his Chris- 
tian neighbours of the west, appealed for help and pointed to 
the danger which threatened Europe should the Turks take 
Constantinople. 

168 



THE CRUSADER 169 

The Italian cities which had established colonies along the 
coast of Asia Minor and Palestine, in fear for their posses- 
sions, reported terrible stories of Turkish atrocities and Chris- 
tian suffering. All Europe got excited. 

Pope Urban II, a Frenchman from Reims, who had been 
educated at the same famous cloister of Cluny which had 
trained Gregory VII, thought that the time had come for 
action. The general state of Europe was far from satisfactory. 
The primitive agricultural methods of that day (unchanged 
since Roman times) caused a constant scarcity of food. There 
was unemployment and hunger and these are apt to lead to 
discontent and riots. Western Asia in older days had fed mil- 
lions. It was an excellent field for the purpose of immigration. 

Therefore at the council of Clermont in France in the year 
1095 the Pope arose, described the terrible horrors which the 
infidels had inflicted upon the Holy Land, gave a glowing de- 
scription of this country which ever since the days of Moses 
had been overflowing with milk and honey, and exhorted the 
knights of France and the people of Europe in general to 
leave wife and child and deliver Palestine from the Turks. 

A wave of religious hysteria swept across the continent. 
All reason stopped. Men would drop their hammer and saw, 
walk out of their shop and take the nearest road to the east 
to go and kill Turks. Children would leave their homes to "go 
to Palestine" and bring the terrible Turks to their knees by 
the mere appeal of their youthful zeal and Christian piety. 
Fully ninety percent of those enthusiasts never got within 
sight of the Holy Land. They had no money. They were 
forced to beg or steal to keep alive. They became a danger 
to the safety of the highroads and they were killed by the 
angry country people. 

The first Crusade, a wild mob of honest Christians, default- 
ing bankrupts, penniless noblemen and fugitives from justice, 
following the lead of half-crazy Peter the Hermit and Walter- 
without-a-Cent, began their campaign against the Infidels by 
murdering all the Jews whom they met by the way. They 
got as far as Hungary and then they were all killed. 



170 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



This experience taught the Church a lesson. Enthusiasm 
alone would not set the Holy Land free. Organisation was 
as necessary as good-will and courage. A year was spent in 
training and equipping an army of 200,000 men. They were 
placed under command of Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert, duke 
of Normandy, Robert, count of Flanders, and a number of 
other noblemen, all experienced in the art of war. 

In the year 1096 this second crusade started upon its long 
voyage. At Constantinople the knights did homage to the 




THE FIRST CRUSADE 



Emperor. (For as I have told you, traditions die hard, and 
a Roman Emperor, however poor and powerless, was still held 
in great respect). Then they crossed into Asia, killed all the 
Moslems who fell into their hands, stormed Jerusalem, mas- 
sacred the Mohammedan population, and marched to the Holy 
Sepulchre to give praise and thanks amidst tears of piety and 
gratitude. But soon the Turks were strengthened by the arri- 
val of fresh troops. Then they retook Jerusalem and in turn 
killed the faithful followers of the Cross. 



THE CRUSADER 



171 




172 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



During the next two centuries, seven other crusades took 
place. Gradually the Crusaders learned the technique of the 
trip. The land voyage was too tedious and too dangerous. 
They preferred to cross the Alps and go to Genoa or Venice 
where they took ship for the east. The Genoese and the Vene- 
tians made this trans-Mediterranean passenger service a very 
profitable business. They charged exorbitant rates, and when 
the Crusaders (most of whom had very little money) could not 
pay the price, these Italian "profiteers" kindly allowed them 
to "work their way across." In return for a fare from Venice 
to Acre, the Crusader undertook to do a stated amount of 
fighting for the owners of his vessel. In this way Venice greatly 
increased her territory along the coast of the Adriatic and in 
Greece, where Athens became a Venetian colony, and in the 
islands of Cyprus and Crete and Rhodes. 

All this, however, helped 
little in settling the question 
of the Holy Land. After 
the first enthusiasm had 
worn off, a short crusading 
trip became part of the lib- 
eral education of every well- 
bred young man, and there 
never was any lack of can- 
didates for service in Pales- 
tine. But the old zeal was 
gone. The Crusaders, who 
had begun their w^arfare 
with deep hatred for the 
Mohammedans and great 
love for the Christian peo- 
ple of the eastern Roman 
Empire and Armenia, suf- 
fered a complete change of heart. They came to despise the 
Greeks of Byzantium, who cheated them and frequently be- 
trayed the cause of the Cross, and the Armenians and all the 
other Levantine races, and they began to appreciate the vir- 




THE CRUSADERS TAKE JERUSALEM 



THE CRUSADER 



173 



tues of their enemies who proved to be generous and fair 
opponents. 

Of course, it would never do to say this openly. But when 
the Crusader returned home, he was likely to imitate the man- 
ners which he had learned from his heathenish foe, compared 
to whom the average western knight was still a good deal of a 
country bumpkin. He also brought with him several new 
food-stuffs, such as peaches and spinach which he planted in his 
garden and grew for his own benefit. He gave up the bar- 
barous custom of wearing a load of heavy armour and appeared 
in the flowing robes of silk or cotton which were the traditional 
habit of the followers of the Prophet and were originally worn 
by the Turks. Indeed the Crusades, which had begun as a 
punitive expedition against the Heathen, became a course of 
general instruction in civilisation for millions of young Euro- 
peans. 

From a military and politi- 
cal point of view the Crusades 
were a failure. Jerusalem and 
a number of cities were taken 
and lost. A dozen little king- 
doms were established in Syria 
and Palestine and Asia Minor, 
but they were re-conquered by 
the Turks and after the year 
1244 (when Jerusalem became 
definitely Turkish) the status 
of the Holy Land was the same 
as it had been before 1095. 

But Europe had undergone a 
great change. The people of 
the west had been allowed a ghmpse of the light and the sun- 
shine and the beauty of the east. Their dreary castles no 
longer satisfied them. They wanted a broader life. Neither 
Church nor State could give this to them. 
They found it in the cities. 




THE CRUSADER'S GRAVE 




WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES 
SAID THAT "CITY AIR IS FREE AIR" 

• 

The early part of the Middle Ages had been an era of 
pioneering and of settlement. A new people, who thus far 
had lived outside the wide range of forest, mountains and 
marshes which protected the north-eastern frontier of the Ro- 
man Empire, had forced its way into the plains of western 
Europe and had taken possession of most of the land. They 
were restless, as all pioneers have been since the beginning of 
time. They liked to be "on the go." They cut down the 
forests and they cut each other's throats with equal energy. 
Few of them wanted to live in cities. They insisted upon being 
"free," they loved to feel the fresh air of the hillsides fill their 
, lungs while they drove their herds across the wind-swept pas- 
tures. When they no longer liked their old homes, they pulled 
up stakes and went away in search of fresh adventures. 

The weaker ones died. The hardy fighters and the cou- 
rageous women who had followed their men into the wilder- 
ness survived. In this way they developed a strong race of 
men. They cared little for the graces of life. They were too 
busy to play the fiddle or write pieces of poetry. They had 
little love for discussions. The priest, "the learned man" of the 
village ( and before the middle of the thirteenth century, a lay- 
man who could read and write was regarded as a "sissy") was 
supposed to settle all questions which had no direct practical 

174 



THE MEDIEVAL CITY 175 

value. Meanwhile the German chieftain, the Frankish Baron, 
the Northman Duke (or whatever their names and titles) occu- 
pied their share of the territory which once had been part of 
the great Roman Empire and among the ruins of past glory, 
they built a world of their own which pleased them mightily 
and which they considered quite perfect. 

They managed the affairs of their castle and the surround- 
ing country to the best of their ability. They were as faithful 
to the commandments of the Church as any weak mortal could 
hope to be. They were sufficiently loj'-al to their king or em- 
peror to keep on good terms with those distant but always dan- 
gerous potentates. In short, they tried to do right and to be 
fair to their neighbours without being exactly unfair to their 
own interests. 

It was not an ideal world in which they found themselves. 
The greater part of the people were serfs or "villeins," farm- 
hands who were as much a part of the soil upon which they 
lived as the cows and sheep whose stables they shared. Their 
fate was not particularly happy nor was it particularly un- 
happy. But what was one to do? The good Lord who ruled 
the world of the Middle Ages had undoubtedly ordered every- 
thing for the best. If He, in his wisdom, had decided that 
there must be both knights and serfs, it was not the duty of 
these faithful sons of the church to question the arrangement. 
The serfs therefore did not complain but when they were too 
hard driven, they would die off like cattle which are not fed 
and stabled in the right waj^ and then something would be has- 
tily done to better their condition. But if the progress of the 
world had been left to the serf and his feudal master, we would 
still be living after the fashion of the twelfth century, saying 
"abracadabra" when we tried to stop a tooth-ache, and feeling 
a deep contempt and hatred for the dentist who offered to help 
us with his "science," which most likely was of Mohammedan 
or heathenish origin and therefore both wicked and useless. 

When you grow up you will discover that many people do 
not believe in "progress" and they will prove to you by the 
terrible deeds of some of our own contemporaries that "the 



176 THE STORY OF MIANKIND 

world does not change." But I hope that you will not pay 
much attention to such talk. You see, it took our ancestors 
almost a million years to learn how to Avalk on their hind legs. 
Other centuries had to go by before their animal-like grunts 
developed into an understandable language. Writing — the art 
of preserving our ideas for the benefit of future generations, 
without which no progress is possible — was invented only four 
thousand years ago. The idea of turning the forces of nature 
into the obedient servants of man was quite new in the days of 
your own grandfather. It seems to me, therefore, that we are 
making progress at an unheard-of rate of speed. Perhaps we 
have paid a little too much attention to the mere physical com- 
forts of life. That will change in due course of time and we 
shall then attack the problems which are not related to health 
and to wages and plumbing and machinery in general. 

But please do not be too sentimental about the "good old 
days." Many people who only see the beautiful churches and 
the great works of art which the Middle Ages have left behind 
grow quite eloquent when they compare our own ugly civilisa- 
tion with its hurry and its noise and the evil smells of back- 
firing motor trucks with the cities of a thousand years ago. 
But these mediaeval churches were invariably surrounded by 
miserable hovels compared to which a modern tenement house 
stands forth as a luxurious palace. It is true that the noble 
Lancelot and the equally noble Parsifal, the pure young hero 
who went in search of the Holy Grail, were not bothered by 
the odor of gasoline. But there were other smells of the barn- 
yard variety — odors of decaying refuse which had been thrown 
into the street — of pig-sties surrounding the Bishop's palace — 
of unwashed people who had inherited their coats and hats 
from their grandfathers and who had never learned the bless- 
ing of soap. I do not want to paint too unpleasant a picture. 
But when you read in the ancient chronicles that the King of 
France, looking out of the windows of his palace, fainted at 
the stench caused by the pigs rooting in the streets of Paris, 
when an ancient manuscript recounts a few details of an epi- 
demic of the plague or of small-pox, then you begin to under- 



THE MEDIAEVAL CITY 177 

stand that "progress" is something more than a catchword used 
by modern advertising men. 

No, the progress of the last six hundred years would not 
have been possible without the existence of cities. I shall, 
therefore, have to make this chapter a little longer than many 
of the others. It is too important to be reduced to three or 
four pages, devoted to mere political events. 

The ancient world of Egj^pt and Babylonia and Assyria 
had been a world of cities. Greece had been a country of City- 
States. The history of Phoenicia was the history of two cities 
called Sidon and Tyre. The Roman Empire was the "hinter- 
land" of a single town. Writing, art, science, astronomy, ar- 
chitecture, literature, the theatre — ^the list is endless — have all 
been products of the city. 

For almost four thousand years the wooden bee-hive which 
we call a town had been the workshop of the world. Then came 
the great migrations. The Roman Empire was destroyed. 
The cities were burned down and Europe once more became a 
land of pastures and Httle agricultural villages. During the 
Dark Ages the fields of civilisation had lain fallow. 

The Crusades had prepared the soil for a new crop. It 
was time for the harvest, but the fruit was plucked by the 
burghers of the free cities. 

I have told you the story of the castles and the monasteries, 
with their heavy stone enclosures — the homes of the knights 
and the monks, who guarded men's bodies and their souls. 
You have seen how a few artisans (butchers and bakers and an 
occasional candle-stick maker) came to live near the castle 
to tend to the wants of their masters and to find protection 
in case of danger. Sometimes the feudal lord allowed these 
people to surround their houses with a stockade. But they 
were dependent for their living upon the good-will of the 
mighty Seigneur of the castle. When he went about they knelt 
before him and kissed his hand. 

Then came the Crusades and many things changed. The 
migrations had driven people from the north-east to the west. 
The Crusades made millions of people travel from the west to 



178 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

the highly civilised regions of the south-east. They discovered 
that the world was not bounded by the four walls of their little 
settlement. They came to appreciate better clothes, more com- 
fortable houses, new dishes, products of the mysterious Orient. 
After their return to their old homes, they insisted that they 
be supplied with those articles. The peddler with his pack 
upon his back — ^the only merchant of the Dark Ages — added 
these goods to his old merchandise, bought a cart, hired a few 
ex-crusaders to protect him against the crime wave which fol- 
lowed this great international war, and went forth to do busi- 
ness upon a more modern and larger scale. His career was 
not an easy one. Every time he entered the domains of an- 
other Lord he had to pay tolls and taxes. But the business 
was profitable all the same and the peddler continued to make 
his rounds. 

Soon certain energetic merchants discovered that the goods 
which they had always imported from afar could be made at 
home. They turned part of their homes into a workshop. 
They ceased to be merchants and became manufacturers. They 
sold their products not only to the lord of the castle and to the 
abbot in his monastery, but they exported them to nearby towns. 
The lord and the abbot paid them with products of their farms, 
eggs and wines, and with honey, which in those early days was 
used as sugar. But the citizens of distant towns were obliged 
to pay in cash and the manufacturer and the merchant began to 
own little pieces of gold, which entirely changed their position 
in the society of the early Middle Ages. 

It is difficult for you to imagine a world without money. 
In a modern city one cannot possibly live without money. All 
day long you carry a pocket full of small discs of metal to 
"pay your way." You need a nickel for the street-car, a dollar 
for a dinner, three cents for an evening paper. But many 
people of the early Middle Ages never saw a piece of coined 
money from the time they were born to the day of their death. 
The gold and silver of Greece and Rome lay buried beneath 
the ruins of their cities. The world of the migrations, which 



THE MEDIEVAL CITY 



179 



had succeeded the Empire, was an agricultural world. Every 
farmer raised enough grain and enough sheep and enough 
cows for his own use. 

The mediaBval knight was a country squire and was rarely 
forced to pay for materials in money. His estates produced 







J 









THE CASTLE AND THE CITY 



everything that he and his family ate and drank and wore on 
their backs. The bricks for his house were made along the banks 
of the nearest river. Wood for the rafters of the hall was cut 
from the baronial forest. The few articles that had to come 
from abroad were paid for in goods — in honey — in eggs — in 
fagots. 



180 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

But the Crusades upset the routine of the old agricultural 
life in a very drastic fashion. Suppose that the Duke of Hil- 
desheim was going to the Holy Land. He must travel thou- 
sands of miles and he must pay his passage and his hotel-bills. 
At home he could pay with products of his farm. But he 
could not well take a hundred dozen eggs and a cart-load of 
hams with him to satisfy the greed of the shipping agent of 
Venice or the inn-keeper of the Brenner Pass. These gentle- 
men insisted upon cash. His Lordship therefore was obHged 
to take a small quantity of gold with him upon his voyage. 
Where could he find this gold? He could borrow it from the 
Lombards, the descendants of the old Longobards, who had 
turned professional money-lenders, who seated behind their 
exchange-table (commonly known as "banco" or bank) were 
glad to let his Grace have a few hundred gold pieces in ex- 
change for a mortgage upon his estates, that they might be re- 
paid in case His Lordship should die at the hands of the Turks. 

That was dangerous business for the borrower. In the end, 
the Lombards invariably owned the estates and the Knight 
became a bankrupt, who hired himself out as a fighting man to 
a more powerful and more careful neighbour. 

His Grace could also go to that part of the town where the 
Jews were forced to live. There he could borrow money at a 
rate of fifty or sixty percent, interest. That, too, was bad 
business. But was there a way out? Some of the people of the 
little city which surrounded the castle were said to have money. 
They had known the young lord all his life. His father and 
their fathers had been good friends. They would not be un- 
reasonable in their demands. Very well. His Lordship's 
clerk, a monk who could write and keep accounts, sent a note 
to the best known merchants and asked for a small loan. The 
townspeople met in the work-room of the jeweller who made 
chalices for the nearby churches and discussed this demand. 
They could not well refuse. It would serve no purpose to 
ask for "interest." In the first place, it was against the re- 
ligious principles of most people to take interest and in the 



A- 



( 




THE MEDIEVAL TOWN 



THE MEDIEVAL CITY 181 

second place, it would never be paid except in agricultural 
products and of these the people had enough and to spare. 

"But," suggested the tailor who spent his days quietly sit- 
ting upon his table and who was somewhat of a philosopher, 
"suppose that we ask some favour in return for our money. 
We are all fond of fishing. But his Lordship won't let us 
fish in his brook. Suppose that we let him have a hundred 
ducats and that he give us in return a written guarantee al- 
lowing us to fish all we want in all of his rivers. Then he gets 
the hundred which he needs, but we get the fish and it will be 
good business all around." 

The day his Lordship accepted this proposition, (it seemed 
such an easy way of getting a hundred gold pieces ) , he signed 
the death-warrant of his own power. His clerk drew up the 
agreement. His Lordship made his mark (for he could not 
sign his name) and departed for the East. Two years later 
he came back, dead broke. The townspeople were fishing in 
the castle pond. The sight of this silent row of anglers annoyed 
his Lordship. He told his equerry to go and chase the crowd 
away. They went, but that night a delegation of merchants 
visited the castle. They were very polite. They congratu- 
lated his Lordship upon his safe return. They were sorry his 
Lordship had been annoyed by the fishermen, but as his Lord- 
ship might perhaps remember he had given them permission 
to do so himself, and the tailor produced the Charter which 
had been kept in the safe of the jeweller ever since the master 
had gone to the Holy Land. 

His Lordship was much annoyed. But once more he was 
in dire need of some money. In Italy he had signed his name 
to certain documents which were now in the possession of Sal- 
vestro dei Medici, the well-known banker. These documents 
were "promissory notes" and they were due two months from 
date. Their total amount came to three hundred and forty 
pounds, Flemish gold. Under these circumstances, the noble 
knight could not well show the rage which filled his heart and 
his proud soul. Instead, he suggested another little loan. The 
merchants retired to discuss the matter. 



182 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



After three days they came back and said "yes." They 
were only too happy to be able to help their master in his diffi- 
culties, but in return for the 345 golden pounds would he give 
them another written promise (another charter) that they, 
the townspeople, might establish a council of their own to be 
elected by all the merchants and free citizens of the city, said 
council to manage civic affairs without interference from the 
side of. the castle? 

His Lordship was con- 
foundedly angry. But again, 
he needed the money. He said 
yes, and signed the charter. 
Next week, he repented. He 
called his soldiers and went to 
the house of the jeweller and 
asked for the documents which 
his crafty subjects had cajoled 
out of him under the pressure 
of circumstances. He took 
them away and burned them. 
The townspeople stood by and 
said nothing. But when next 
his Lordship needed money to 
pay for the dowry of his daugh- 
ter, he was unable to get a 
single penny. After that little 
affair at the jeweller's his credit 

was not considered good. He was forced to eat humble-pie 
and offer to make certain reparations. Before his Lordship 
got the first installment of the stipulated sum, the townspeople 
were once more in possession of all their old charters and a 
brand new one which permitted them to build a "city-hall" and 
a strong tower where all the charters might be kept protected 
against fire and theft, which really meant protected against 
future violence on the part of the Lord and his armed followers. 

This, in a very general way, is what happened during the 
centuries which followed the Crusades. It was a slow process. 




THE BELFRY 



THE MEDIAEVAL CITY 



18S 



this gradual shifting of power from the castle to the city. There 
was some fighting. A few tailors and jewellers were killed and 
a few castles went up in smoke. But such occurrences were 
not common. Almost imperceptibly the towns grew richer 
and the feudal lords grew poorer. To maintain themselves 
they were for ever forced to excharge charters of civic liberty 
in return for ready cash. The cities grew. They offered an 
asylum to run-away serfs who gained their liberty after they 
had lived a number of years behind the city walls. They came 
to be the home of the more 
energetic elements of the 
surrounding country dis- 
tricts. They were proud of 
their new importance and 
expressed their power in the 
churches and public build- 
ings which they erected 
around the old market 
place, where centuries be- 
fore the barter of eggs and 
sheep and honey and salt 
had taken place. They 
wanted their children to 
have a better chance in life 
than they had enjoyed 
themselves. They hired 
monks to come to their city and be school teachers. When 
they heard of a man who could paint pictures upon boards of 
wood, they offered him a pension if he would come and cover 
the walls of their chapels and their town hall with scenes from 
the Holy Scriptures. 

Meanwhile his Lordship, in the dreary and drafty halls of 
his castle, saw all this up-start splendour and regretted the 
day when first he had signed away a single one of his sovereign 
rights and prerogatives. But he was helpless. The towns- 
people with their well-filled strong-boxes snapped their fingers 
at him. They were free men, fully prepared to hold what they 
had gained by the sweat of their brow and after a struggle 
which had lasted for more than ten generations. 




GUNPOWDER 



HOW THE PEOPLE OF THE CITIES ASSERTED 
THEIR RIGHT TO BE HEARD IN THE 
ROYAL COUNCILS OF THEIR COUNTRY 

As long as people were "nomads," wandering tribes of shep- 
herds, all men had been equal and had been responsible for the 
welfare and safety of the entire community. 

But after they had settled down and some had become rich 
and others had grown poor, the government was apt to fall into 
the hands of those who were not obliged to work for their living 
and who could devote themselves to politics. 

I have told you how this had happened in Egypt and in 
Mesopotamia and in Greece and in Rome. It occurred among 
the Germanic population of western Europe as soon as order 
had been restored. The western European world was ruled 
in the first place by an emperor who was elected by the seven 
or eight most important kings of the vast Roman Empire of 
the German nation and who enjoyed a great deal of imaginary 
and very little actual power. It was ruled by a number of 
kings who sat upon shaky thrones. The every-day govern- 
ment was in the hands of thousands of feudal princelets. Their 
subjects were peasants or serfs. There were few cities. There 
was hardly any middle class. But during the thirteenth cen- 
tury (after an absence of almost a thousand years) the middle 
class — ^the merchant class — once more appeared upon the his- 

184 



MEDIAEVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 



185 




186 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

torical stage and its rise in power, as we saw in the last chapter, 
had meant a decrease in the influence of the castle folk. 

Thus far, the king, in ruling his domains, had only paid 
attention to the wishes of his noblemen and his bishops. But the 
new world of trade and commerce which grew out of the 
Crusades forced him to recognise the middle class or suffer 
from an ever-increasing emptiness of his exchequer. Their 
majesties (if they had followed their hidden wishes) would 
have as lief consulted their cows and their pigs as the good 
burghers of their cities. But they could not help themselves. 
They swallowed the bitter pill because it was gilded, but not 
without a struggle. 

In England, during the absence of Richard the Lion 
Hearted (who had gone to the Holy Land, but who was spend- 
ing the greater part of his crusading voyage in an Austrian 
jail) the government of the country had been placed in the 
hands of John, a brother of Richard, who was his inferior in 
the art of war, but his equal as a bad administrator. John had 
begun his career as a regent by losing Normandy and the 
greater part of the French possessions. Next, he had man- 
aged to get into a quarrel with Pope Innocent III, the famous 
enemy of the Hohenstaufens. The Pope had excommunicated 
John (as Gregory VII had excommunicated the Emperor 
Henry IV two centuries before). In the year 1213 John had 
been obliged to make an ignominious peace just as Henry IV 
had been obliged to do in the year 1077. 

Undismayed by his lack of success, John continued to abuse 
his royal power until his disgruntled vassals made a prisoner 
of their anointed ruler and forced him to promise that he 
would be good and would never again interfere with the ancient 
rights of his subjects. All this happened on a little island in 
the Thames, near the village of Runnymede, on the 15th of 
June of the year 1215. , The document to which John signed 
his name was called the Big Charter — ^the Magna Carta. It 
contained very little that was new. It re-stated in short and 
direct sentences the ancient duties of the king and enumerated 
the privileges of his vassals. It paid little attention to the 



MEDIEVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 187 

rights (if any) of the vast majority of the people, the peasants, 
but it offered certain securities to the rising class of the mer- 
chants. It was a charter of great importance because it defined 
the powers of the king with more precision than had ever been 
done before. But it was still a purely mediaeval document. It 
did not refer to common human beings, unless they happened to 
be the property of the vassal, which must be safe-guarded 
against royal tyranny just as the Baronial woods and cows 
were protected against an excess of zeal on the part of the 
royal foresters. 

A few years later, however, we begin to hear a very different 
note in the councils of His Majesty. 

John, who was bad, both by birth and inclination, solemnly 
had promised to obey the great charter and then had broken 
every one of its many stipulations. Fortunately, he soon died 
and was succeeded by his son Henry III, who was forced to 
recognise the charter anew. Meanwhile, Uncle Richard, the 
Crusader, had cost the country a great deal of money and the 
king was obliged to ask for a few loans that he might pay his 
obligations to the Jewish money-lenders. The large land-own- 
ers and the bishops who acted as councillors to the king could 
not provide him with the necessary gold and silver. The king 
then gave orders that a few representatives of the cities be 
called upon to attend the sessions of his Great Council. They 
made their first appearance in the year 1265. They were sup- 
posed to act only as financial experts who were not supposed 
to take a part in the general discussion of matters of state, but 
to give advice exclusively upon the question of taxation. 

Gradually, however, these representatives of the "commons" 
were consulted upon many of the problems and the meeting 
of noblemen, bishops and city delegates developed into a regu- 
lar Parliament, a place "ou Ton parlait," which means in Eng- 
lish where people talked, before important affairs of state were 
decided upon. 

But the institution of such a general advisory-board with 
certain executive powers was not an English invention, as 
seems to be the general belief, and government by a "king and 



188 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



his parliament" was by no means restricted to the British Isles. 
You will find it in every part of Europe. In some countries, 
like France, the rapid increase of the Royal power after the 
Middle Ages reduced the influence of the "parliament" to noth- 
ing. In the year 1302 representatives of the cities had been 
admitted to the meeting of the French Parliament, but five 
centuries had to pass before this "Parliament" was strong 
enough to assert the rights of the middle class, the so-called 




THE HOME OF SWISS LIBERTY 



Third Estate, and break the power of the king. Then they 
made up for lost time and during the French Revolution, abol- 
ished the king, the clergy and the nobles and made the repre- 
sentatives of the common people the rulers of the land. In 
Spain the "cortes" (the king's council) had been opened to the 
commoners as early as the first half of the twelfth century. 
In the Germain Empire, a number of important cities had ob- 
tained the rank of "imperial cities" whose representatives must 
be heard in the imperial diet. 

In Sweden, representatives of the people attended the ses- 
sions of the Riksdag at the first meeting of the year 1359. In 



MEDI/EVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 



189 



Denmark the Daneholf, the ancient national assembly, was re- 
established in 1314, and, although the nobles often regained con- 
trol of the country at the expense of the king and the people, 
the representatives of the cities were never completely deprived 
of their power. 

In the Scandinavian country, the story of representative 
government is particularly interesting. In Iceland, the "Al- 
thing," the assembly of all free landowners, who managed the 
affairs of the island, began to hold regular meetings in the ninth 




THE ABJURATION OF PHILIP II 



century and continued to do so for more than a thousand 
years. 

In Switzerland, the freemen of the different cantons de- 
fended their assemblies against the attempts of a number of 
feudal neighbours with great success. 

Finally, in the Low Countries, in Holland, the councils of 
the different duchies and counties were attended by represen- 
tatives of the third estate as early as the thirteenth century. 

In the sixteenth century a number of these small provinces 
rebelled against their king, abjured his majesty in a solemn 
meeting of the "Estates General," removed the clergy from 



190 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

the discussions, broke the power of the nobles and assumed full 
executive authority over the newly-established Republic of the 
United Seven Netherlands. For two centuries, the representa- 
tives of the town-councils ruled the country without a king, 
without bishops and without noblemen. The city had become 
supreme and the good burghers had become the rulers of the 
land. 



THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD 



WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES 
THOUGHT OF THE WORLD IN WHICH 
THEY HAPPENED TO LIVE 

Dates are a very useful invention. We could not do with- 
out them but unless we are very careful, they will play tricks 
with us. They are apt to make history too precise. For ex- 
ample, when I talk of the point-of-view of mediaeval man, I 
do not mean that on the 31st of December of the year 476, 
suddenly all the people of Europe said, "Ah, now the Roman 
Empire has come to an end and we are living in the Middle 
Ages. How interesting!" 

You could have found men at the Prankish court of Charle- 
magne who were Romans in their habits, in their manners, in 
their out-look upon life. On the other hand, when you grow 
up you will discover that some of the people in this world have 
never passed beyond the stage of the cave-man. All times 
and all ages overlap, and the ideas of succeeding generations 
play tag with each other. But it is possible to study the minds 
of a good many true representatives of the Middle Ages and 
then give you an idea of the average man's attitude toward 
life and the many difficult problems of living. 

First of all, remember that the people of the Middle Ages 
never thought of themselves as free-born citizens, who could 
come and go at will and shape their fate according to their 
ability or energy or luck. On the contrary, they all considered 

191 



192 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

themselves part of the general scheme of things, which included 
emperors and serfs, popes and heretics, heroes and swashbuck- 
lers, rich men, poor men, beggar men and thieves. They ac- 
cepted this divine ordinance and asked no questions. In this, 
of course, they differed radically from modern people who ac- 
cept nothing and who are forever trying to improve their own 
financial and political situation. 

To the man and woman of the thirteenth century, the world 
hereafter — a Heaven of wonderful delights and a Hell of brim- 
stone and suffering — meant something more than empty words 
or vague theological phrases. It was an actual fact and the 
mediaeval burghers and knights spent the greater part of their 
time preparing for it. We modern people regard a noble 
death after a well-spent life with the quiet calm of the ancient 
Greeks and Romans. After three score years of work and ef- 
fort, we go to sleep with the feeling that all will be well. 

But during the Middle Ages, the King of Terrors with 
His grinning skull and his rattling bones was man's steady com- 
panion. He woke his victims up with terrible tunes on his 
scratchy fiddle — he sat down with them at dinner — ^he smiled 
at them from behind trees and shrubs when they took a girl 
out for a walk. If you had heard nothing but hair-raising 
yarns about cemeteries and coffins and fearful diseases when 
you were very young, instead of listening to the fairy stories 
of Anderson and Grimm, you, too, would have lived all your 
days in a dread of the final hour and the gruesome day of 
Judgment. That is exactly what happened to the children of 
the Middle Ages. They moved in a world of devils and spooks 
and only a few occasional angels. Sometimes, their fear of 
the future filled their souls with humility and piety, but often 
it influenced them the other way and made them cruel and 
sentimental. They would first of all murder all the women 
and children of a captured city and then they would devoutly 
march to a holy spot and with their hands gory with the blood 
of innocent victims, they would pray that a merciful heaven for- 
give them their sins. Yea, they would do more than pray, they 
would weep bitter tears and would confess themselves the most 



THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD 193 

wicked of sinners. But the next day, they would once more 
butcher a camp of Saracen enemies without a spark of mercy 
in their hearts. 

Of course, the Crusaders were Knights and obeyed a some- 
what different code of manners from the common men. But in 
such respects the common man was just the same as his mas- 
ter. He, too, resembled a shy horse, easily frightened by a 
shadow or a silly piece of paper, capable of excellent and faith- 
ful service but liable to run away and do terrible damage when 
his feverish imagination saw a ghost. 

In judging these good people, however, it is wise to re- 
member the terrible disadvantages under which they lived. 
They were really barbarians who posed as civilised people. 
Charlemagne and Otto the Great were called "Roman Emper- 
ors," but they had as little resemblance to a real Roman Em- 
peror (say Augustus or Marcus Aurelius) as "King" Wumba 
Wumba of the upper Congo has to the highly educated rulers 
of Sweden or Denmark. They were savages who lived amidst 
glorious ruins but who did not share the benefits of the civi- 
lisation which their fathers and grandfathers had destroyed. 
They knew nothing. They were ignorant of almost every fact 
which a boy of twelve knows to-day. They were obliged to go 
to one single book for all their information. That was the 
Bible. But those parts of the Bible which have influenced the 
history of the human race for the better are those chapters of 
the New Testament which teach us the great moral lessons of 
love, charity and forgiveness. As a handbook of astronomy, 
zoology, botany, geometry and all the other sciences, the ven- 
erable book is not entirely reliable. In the twelfth century, a 
second book was added to the mediaeval library, the great en- 
cyclopsedia of useful knowledge, compiled by Aristotle, the 
Greek philosopher of the fourth century before Christ. Why 
the Christian church should have been willing to accord such 
high honors to the teacher of Alexander the Great, whereas 
they condemned all other Greek philosophers on account of 
their heathenish doctrines, I really do not know. But next to 
the Bible, Aristotle was recognized as the only reliable teacher 



194 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

whose works could be safely placed into the hands of true 
Christians. 

His works had reached Europe in a somewhat roundabout 
way. They had gone from Greece to Alexandria. They had 
then been translated from the Greek into the Arabic language 
by the Mohammedans who conquered Egypt in the seventh 
century. They had followed the Moslem armies into Spain and 
the philosophy of the great Stagirite (Aristotle was a native of 
Stagira in Macedonia) was taught in the Moorish universities 
of Cordova. The Arabic text was then translated into Latin 
by the Christian students who had crossed the Pyrenees to get 
a liberal education, and this much travelled version of the fa- 
mous books was at last taught at the different schools of north- 
western Europe. It was not very clear, but that made it all 
the more interesting. 

With the help of the Bible and Aristotle, the most brilliant 
men of the Middle Ages now set to work to explain all things 
between Heaven and Earth in their relation to the expressed 
will of God. These brilliant men, the so-called Scholasts or 
Schoolmen, were really very intelligent, but they had obtained 
their information exclusively from books, and never from ac- 
tual observation. If they wanted to lecture on the sturgeon 
or on caterpillars, they read the Old and New Testaments and 
Aristotle, and told their students everything these good books 
had to say upon the subject of caterpillars and sturgeons. 
They did not go out to the nearest river to catch a sturgeon. 
They did not leave their libraries and repair to the backyard 
to catch a few caterpillars and look at these animals and study 
them in their native haunts. Even such famous scholars as 
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas did not inquire whether 
the sturgeons in the land of Palestine and the caterpillars of 
Macedonia might not have been different from the sturgeons 
and the caterpillars of western Europe. 

When occasionally an exceptionally curious person like 
Roger Bacon appeared in the council of the learned and began 
to experiment with magnifying glasses and funny little tele- 
scopes and actually dragged the sturgeon and the caterpillar 




THE MEDLEVAL WORLD 



THE MEDIEVAL WORLD 195 

into the lecturing room and proved that they were different 
fiom the creatures described by the Old Testament and by 
Aristotle, the Schoolmen shook their dignified heads. Bacon 
was going too far. When he dared to suggest that an hour 
of actual observation was worth more than ten years with 
Aristotle and that the works of that famous Greek might as 
well have remained untranslated for all the good they had ever 
done, the scholasts went to the police and said, "This man is 
a danger to the safety of the state. He wants us to study 
Greek that we may read Aristotle in the original. Why should 
he not be contented with our Latin- Arabic translation which 
has satisfied our faithful people for so many hundred years? 
Why is he so curious about the insides of fishes and the insides 
of insects? He is probably a wicked magician trying to upset 
the established order of things by his Black Magic." And so 
well did they plead their cause that the frightened guardians 
of the peace forbade Bacon to write a single word for more 
than ten years. When he resumed his studies he had learned 
a lesson. He wrote his books in a queer cipher which made it 
impossible for his contemporaries to read them, a trick which 
became common as the Church became more desperate in its 
attempts to prevent people from asking questions which would 
lead to doubts and infidelity. 

This, however, was not done out of any wicked desire to 
keep people ignorant. The feeling which prompted the heretic 
hunters of that day was really a very kindly one. They firmly 
believed — nay, they knew — that this life was but the prepara- 
tion for our real existence in the next world. They felt con- 
vinced that too much knowledge made people uncomfortable, 
filled their minds with dangerous opinions and led to doubt 
and hence to perdition. A mediaeval Schoolman who saw one 
of his pupils stray away from the revealed authority of the 
Bible and Aristotle, that he might study things for himself, felt 
as uncomfortable as a loving mother who sees her young child 
approach a hot stove. She knows that he will burn his little 
fingers if he is allowed to touch it and she tries to keep him 
back, and if necessary she will use force. But she really loves 



196 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

the child and if he will only obey her, she will be as good to him 
as she possibly can be. In the same way the mediaeval guard- 
ians of people's souls, while they were strict in all matters 
pertaining to the Faith, slaved day and night to render the 
greatest possible service to the members of their flock. They 
held out a helping hand whenever they could and the society 
of that day shows the influence of thousands of good men and 
pious women who tried to make the fate of the average mortal 
as bearable as possible. 

A serf was a serf and his position would never change. But 
the Good Lord of the Middle Ages who allowed the serf to 
remain a slave all his life had bestowed an immortal soul upon 
this humble creature and therefore he must be protected in his 
rights, that he might live and die as a good Christian. When 
he grew too old or too weak to work he must be taken care 
of by the feudal master for whom he had worked. The serf, 
therefore, who led a monotonous and dreary life, was never 
haunted by fear of to-morrow. He knew that he was "safe" — 
that he could not be thrown out of employment, that he would 
always have a roof over his head (a leaky roof, perhaps, but 
a roof all the same), and that he would always have something 
to eat. 

This feeling of "stability" and of "safety" was found in all 
classes of society. In the towns the merchants and the artisans 
established guilds which assured every member of a steady in- 
come. It did not encourage the ambitious to do better than 
their neighbours. Too often the guilds gave protection to 
the "slacker" who managed to "get by." But they estab- 
lished a general feeling of content and assurance among the 
labouring classes which no longer exists in our day of general 
competition. The Middle Ages were familiar with the dangers 
of what we modern people call "corners," when a single rich 
man gets hold of all the available grain or soap or j)ickled her- 
ring, and then forces the world to buy from him at his own 
price. The authorities, therefore, discouraged wholesale trad- 
ing and regulated the price at which merchants were allowed 
to sell their goods. 



THE MEDIEVAL WORLD 197 

The Middle Ages disliked competition. Why compete and 
fill the world with hurry and rivalry and a multitude of push- 
ing men, when the Day of Judgement was near at hand, when 
riches would count for no!:hing and when the good serf would 
enter the golden gates of Heaven while the bad knight was 
sent to do penance in the deepest pit of Inferno? 

In short, the people of the Middle Ages were asked to sur- 
render part of their liberty of thought and action, that they 
might enjoy greater safety from poverty of the body and pov- 
erty of the soul. 

And with a very few exceptions, they did not object. They 
firmly believed that they were mere visitors upon this planet — 
that they were here to be prepared for a greater and more im- 
portant life. Deliberately they turned their backs upon a 
world which was filled with suffering and wickedness and in- 
justice. They pulled down the blinds that the rays of the 
sun might not distract their attention from that chapter in the 
Apocalypse which told them of that heavenly light which was 
to illumine their happiness in all eternity. They tried to close 
their eyes to most of the joys of the world in which they lived 
that they might enjoy those which awaited them in the near 
future. They accepted life as a necessary evil and welcomed 
death as the beginning of a glorious day. 

The Greeks and the Romans had never bothered about the 
future but had tried to establish their Paradise right here upon 
this earth. They had succeeded in making life extremely pleas- 
ant for those of their fellow men who did not happen to be 
slaves. Then came the other extreme of the Middle Ages, 
when man built himself a Paradise beyond the highest clouds 
and turned this world into a vale of tears for high and low, 
for rich and poor, for the intelligent and the dumb. It was 
time for the pendulum to swing back in the other direction, as 
I shall tell you in my next chapter. 



MEDIAEVAL TRADE 



HOW THE CRUSADES ONCE MORE MADE THE 
MEDITERRANEAN A BUSY CENTRE OF 
TRADE AND HOW THE CITIES OF THE 
ITALIAN PENINSULA BECAME THE GREAT 
DISTRIBUTING CENTRE FOR THE COM- 
MERCE WITH ASIA AND AFRICA 

There were three good reasons why the Italian cities should 
have been the first to regain a position of great importance 
during the late Middle Ages. The Italian peninsula had been 
settled by Rome at a very early date. There had been more 
roads and more towns and more schools than anywhere else 
in Europe. 

The barbarians had burned as lustily in Italy as elsewhere, 
but there had been so much to destroy that more had been able 
to survive. In the second place, the Pope lived in Italy and 
as the head of a vast pL;liac-il machine, which owned land and 
serfs and buildings and forests and rivers and conducted courts 
of law, he was in constant receipt of a great deal of money. 
The Papal authorities had to be paid in gold and silver as did 
the merchants and ship-owners of Venice and Genoa. The 
cows and the eggs and the horses and all the other agricultural 
products of the north and the west must be changed into actual 
cash before the debt could be paid in the distant city of Rome. 

198 



MEDIAEVAL TRADE 



199 




200 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

This made Italy the one country where there was a compara- 
tive abundance of gold and silver. Finally, during the Cru- 
sades, the Italian cities had become the point of embarkation 
for the Crusaders and had profiteered to an almost unbeliev- 
able extent. 

And after the Crusades had come to an end, these same 
Italian cities remained the distributing centres for those Orien- 
tal goods upon which the people of Europe had come to de- 
pend during the time they had spent in the near east. 

Of these towns, few were as famous as Venice. Venice was 
a republic built upon a mud bank. Thither people from the 
mainland had fled during the invasions of the barbarians in the 
fourth century. Surrounded on all sides by the sea they had 
engaged in the business of salt -making. Salt had been very 
scarce during the Middle Ages, and the price had been high. 
For hundreds of years Venice had enjoyed a monopoly of 
this indispensable table commodity (I say indispensable, be- 
cause people, like sheep, fall ill unless they get a certain amount 
of salt in their food ) . The people had used this monopoly to 
increase the power of their city. At times they had even dared 
to defy the power of the Popes. The town had grown rich and 
had begun to build ships, which engaged in trade with the 
Orient. During the Crusades, these ships were used to carry 
passengers to the Holy Land, and when the passengers could 
not pay for their tickets in cash, they were obliged to help the 
Venetians who were for ever increasing their colonies in the 
iEgean Sea, in Asia Minor and in Egypt. 

By the end of the fourteenth century, the population had 
grown to two hundred thousand, which made Venice the big- 
gest city of the Middle Ages. The people were without in- 
fluence upon the government which was the private affair of a 
small number of rich merchant families. They elected a senate 
and a Doge (or Duke), but the actual rulers of the city were 
the members of the famous Council of Ten, — who maintained 
themselves with the help of a highly organised system of secret- 
service men and professional murderers, who kept watch upon 
all citizens and quietly removed those who might be dangerous 



MEDItEVAL trade 201 

to the safety of their high-handed and unscrupulous Commit- 
tee of Pubhc Safety. 

The other extreme of government, a democracy of very 
turbulent habits, was to be found in Florence. This city con- 
trolled the main road from northern Europe to Rome and used 
the money which it had derived from this fortunate economic 
position to engage in manufacturing. The Florentines tried to 
follow the example of Athens. Noblemen, priests and mem- 
bers of the guilds all took part in the discussions of civic affairs. 
This led to great civic upheaval. People were forever being di- 
vided into political parties and these parties fought each other 
with intense bitterness and exiled their enemies and confiscated 
their possessions as soon as they had gained a victory in the 
council. After several centuries of this rule by organised mobs, 
the inevitable happened. A powerful family made itself master 
of the city and governed the town and the surrounding country 
after the fashion of the old Greek "tyrants." They were called 
the Medici. The earliest Medici had been physicians (medicus 
is Latin for physician, hence their name), but later they had 
turned banker. Their banks and their pawnshops were to be 
found in all the more important centres of trade. Even to- 
day our American pawn-shops display the three golden balls 
which were part of the coat of arms of the mighty house of 
the Medici, who became rulers of Florence and married their 
daughters to the kings of France and were buried in graves 
worthy of a Roman Caesar. 

Then there was Genoa, the great rival of Venice, where 
the merchants specialised in trade with Tunis in Africa and 
the grain depots of the Black Sea. Then there were more than 
two hundred other cities, some large and some small, each a per- 
fect commercial unit, all of them fighting their neighbours and 
rivals with the undying hatred of neighbours who are depriving 
each other of their profits. 

Once the products of the Orient and Africa had been 
brought to these distributing centres, they must be prepared 
for the voyage to the west and the north. i^j^^ 

Genoa carried her goods by water to Marseilles, from wliere 



202 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



they were reshipped to the cities along the Rhone, which in 
turn served as the market places of northern and western 
France. 

Venice used the land route to northern Europe. This an- 
cient road led across the Brenner pass, the old gateway for 
the barbarians who had invaded Italy. Past Innsbriick, the 
merchandise was carried to Basel. From there it drifted down 
the Rhine to the North Sea and England, or it was taken to 




GREAT NOWGOROD 



Augsburg where the Fugger family (who were both bankers 
and manufacturers and who prospered greatly by "shaving" 
the coins with which they paid their workmen), looked after 
the further distribution to Nuremberg and Leipzig and the 
cities of the Baltic and to Wisby (on the Island of Gotland) 
which looked after the needs of the Northern Baltic and dealt 
directly with the Republic of Novgorod, the old commercial 
centre of Russia which was destroyed by Ivan the Terrible in 
the middle of the sixteenth century. 

The little cities on the coast of north-western Europe had 
an interesting story of their own. The mediaeval world ate a 
great deal of fish. There were many fast days and then people 



MEDIEVAL TRADE 20S 

were not permitted to eat meat. For those who lived away 
from the coast and from the rivers, this meant a diet of eggs 
or nothing at all. But early in the thirteenth century a Dutch 
fisherman had discovered a way of curing herring, so that it 
could be transported to distant points. The herring fisheries 
of the North Sea then became of great importance. But some 
time during the thirteenth century, this useful little fish (for 
reasons of its own) moved from the North Sea to the Baltic and 
the cities of that inland sea began to make money. All the 
world now sailed to the Baltic to catch herring and as that fish 
could only be caught during a few months each year (the rest 
of the time it spends in deep water, raising large families of 
little herrings) the ships would have been idle during the rest 
of the time unless they had found another occupation. They 
were then used to carry the wheat of northern and central Rus- 
sia to southern and western Europe. On the return voyage 
they brought spices and silks and carpets and Oriental rugs 
from Venice and Genoa to Bruges and Hamburg and Bremen. 

Out of such simple beginnings there developed an impor- 
tant system of international trade which reached from the 
manufacturing cities of Bruges and Ghent (where the almighty 
guilds fought pitched battles with the kings of France and 
England and established a labour tyranny which completely 
ruined both the employers and the workmen) to the Republic 
of Novgorod in northern Russia, which was a mighty city until 
Tsar Ivan, who distrusted all merchants, took the town and 
killed sixty thousand people in less than a month's time and re- 
duced the survivors to beggary. 

That they might protect themselves against pirates and 
excessive tolls and annoying legislation, the merchants of the 
north founded a protective league which was called the 
"Hansa." The Hansa, which had its headquarters in Liibeck, 
was a voluntary association of more than one hundred cities. 
The association maintained a navy of its own which patrolled 
the seas and fought and defeated the Kings of England and 
Denmark when they dared to interfere with the rights and the 
privileges of the mighty Hanseatic merchants. 



g04 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



I wish that I had more space to tell you some of the won- 
derful stories of this strange commerce which was carried on 
across the high mountains and across the deep seas amidst 
such dangers that every voyage became a glorious adventure. 
But it would take several volumes and it cannot be done here. 




THE HANSA SHIP 



Besides, I hope that I have told you enough about the Middle 
Ages to make you curious to read more in the excellent books 
of which I shall give you a list at the end of this volume. 

The Middle Ages, as I have tried to show you, had been a 
period of very slow progress. The people who were in power 
believed that "progress" was a very undesirable invention of 
the Evil One and ought to be discouraged, and as they hap- 



MEDIEVAL TRADE 205 

pened to occupy the seats of the mighty, it was easy to enforce 
their will upon the patient serfs and the illiterate knights. 
Here and there a few brave souls sometimes ventured forth into 
the forbidden region of science, but they fared badly and were 
considered lucky when they escaped with their lives and a jail 
sentence of twenty years. 

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the flood of inter- 
national commerce swept over western Europe as the Nile 
had swept across the valley of ancient Egypt. It left behind 
a fertile sediment of prosperity. Prosperity meant leisure 
hours and these leisure hours gave both men and women a 
chance to buy manuscripts and take an interest in literature 
and art and music. 

Then once more was the world filled with that divine curi- 
osity which has elevated man from the ranks of those other 
mammals who are his distant cousins but who have remained 
dumb, and the cities, of whose growth and development I have 
told you in my last chapter, offered a safe shelter to these 
brave pioneers who dared to leave the very narrow domain 
of the established order of things. 

They set to work. They opened the windows of their 
cloistered and studious cells. A flood of sunlight entered the 
dusty rooms and showed them the cobwebs which had gathered 
during the long period of semi-darkness. 

They began to clean house. Next they cleaned their gar- 
dens. 

Then they went out into the open fields, outside the crum- 
bling town walls, and said, "This is a good world. We are 
glad that we live in it." 

At that moment, the Middle Ages came to an end and a new 
world began. 



PEOPLE ONCE MORE DARED TO BE HAPPY 
JUST BECAUSE THEY WERE ALIVE. THEY 
TRIED TO SAVE THE REMAINS OF THE 
OLDER AND MORE AGREEABLE CIVILISA- 
TION OF ROME AND GREECE AND THEY 
WERE SO PROUD OF THEIR ACHIEVE- 
MENTS THAT THEY SPOKE OF A RENAIS- 
SANCE OR RE-BIRTH OF CIVILISATION 

The Renaissance was not a political or religious move- 
ment. It was a state of mind. 

The men of the Renaissance continued to be the obedient 
sons of the mother church. They were subjects of kings and 
emperors and dukes and murmured not. 

But their outlook upon life was changed. They began to 
wear different clothes — to speak a different language — ^to live 
different lives in different houses. 

They no longer concentrated all their thoughts and their 
efforts upon the blessed existence that awaited them in Heaven. 
They tried to establish their Paradise upon this planet, and, 
truth to tell, they succeeded in a remarkable degree. 

I have quite often warned you against the danger that 
lies in historical dates. People take them too literally. They 
think of the Middle Ages as a period of darkness and ignor- 

206 



THE RENAISSANCE 207 

ance. "Click," says the clock, and the Renaissance begins and 
cities and palaces are flooded with the bright sunlight of an 
eager intellectual curiosity. 

As a matter of fact, it is quite impossible to draw such 
sharp lines. The thirteenth century belonged most decidedly 
to the Middle Ages. All historians agree upon that. But was 
it a time of darkness and stagnation merely? By no means. 
People were tremendously alive. Great states were being 
founded. Large centres of commerce were being developed. 
High above the turretted towers of the castle and the peaked 
roof of the town-hall, rose the slender spire of the newly built 
Gothic cathedral. Everywhere the world was in motion. The 
high and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall, who had just be- 
come conscious of their own strength (by way of their recently 
acquired riches) were struggling for more power with their 
feudal masters. The members of the guilds who had just be- 
come aware of the important fact that "numbers count" were 
fighting the high and mighty gentlemen of the city -hall. The 
king and his shrewd advisers went fishing in these troubled 
waters and caught many a shining bass of profit which they 
proceeded to cook and eat before the noses of the surprised and 
disappointed councillors and guild brethren. 

To enliven the scenery during the long hours of evening 
when the badly lighted streets did not invite further political 
and economic dispute, the Troubadours and Minnesingers told 
their stories and sang their songs of romance and adventure 
and heroism and loyalty to all fair women. Meanwhile youth, 
impatient of the slowness of progress, flocked to the universi- 
ties, and thereby hangs a story. 

The Middle Ages were "internationally minded." That 
sounds difficult, but wait until I explain it to you. We modern 
people are "nationally minded." We are Americans or Eng- 
lishmen or Frenchmen or Italians and speak English or French 
or Italian and go to English and French and Italian univer- 
sities, unless we want to specialise in some particular branch 
of learning which is only taught elsewhere, and then we learn 



208 THE STORY OF MIANKIND 

another language and go to Munich or Madrid or Moscow. 
But the people of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rarely 
talked of themselves as Englishmen or Frenchmen or Itahans. 
They said, "I am a citizen of Sheffield or Bordeaux or Genoa." 
Because they all belonged to one and the same church they felt 
a certain bond of brotherhood. And as all educated men could 
speak Latin, they possessed an international language which 
removed the stupid language barriers which have grown up 
in modem Europe and which place the small nations at such 
an enormous disadvantage. Just as an example, take the case 
of Erasmus, the great preacher of tolerance and laughter, who 
wrote his books in the sixteenth century. He was the native 
of a small Dutch village. He wrote in Latin and all the world 
was his audience. If he were alive to-day, he would write in 
Dutch. Then only five or six million people would be able to 
read him. To be understood by the rest of Europe and Amer- 
ica, his publishers would be obliged to translate his books into 
twenty different languages. That would cost a lot of money 
and most likely the publishers would never take the trouble 
or the risk. 

Six hundred years ago that could not happen. The greater 
part of the people were still veiy ignorant and could not read 
or wi'ite at all. But those who had mastered the difficult art 
of handling the goose-quill belonged to an international repub- 
lic of letters which spread across the entire continent and which 
knew of no boundaries and respected no limitations of lan- 
guage or nationality. The universities were the strongholds of 
this republic. Unlike modern fortifications, they did not fol- 
low the frontier. They were to be found wherever a teacher 
and a few pupils happened to find themselves together. There 
again the Middle Ages and the Renaissance differed from our 
own time. Nowadays, when a new university is built, the 
process (almost invariably) is as follows: Some rich man 
wants to do something for the community in which he lives or 
a particular religious sect wants to build a school to keep its 
faithful children under decent supervision, or a state needs doc- 



THE RENAISSANCE 



209 



tors and lawyers and teachers* The university begins as a 
large sum of money which is deposited in a bank. This money 
is then used to construct buildings and laboratories and dormi- 
tories. Finally professional teachers are hired, entrance exami- 
nations are held and the university is on the way. 

But in the Middle 



Ages things were done 
differently. A wise man 
said to himself, "I have 
discovered a great truth. 
I must impart my knowl- 
edge to others." And he 
began to preach his wis- 
dom wherever and when- 
ever he could get a few 
people to listen to him, 
like a modern soap-box 
orator. If he was an in- 
teresting speaker, the 
crowd came and stayed. 
If he was dull, they 
shrugged their shoulders 
and continued their way. 

By and by certain young men began to come regularly to hear 
the words of wisdom of this great teacher. They brought copy- 
books with them and a little bottle of ink and a goose quill and 
wrote down what seemed to be important. One day it rained. 
The teacher and his pupils retired to an empty basement or 
the room of the "Professor." The learned man sat in his chair 
and the boys sat on the floor. That was the beginning of the 
University, the "universitas," a corporation of professors and 
students during the Middle Ages, when the "teacher" counted 
for everything and the building in which he taught counted for 
very little. 

As an example, let me tell you of something that happened 
in the ninth century. In the town of Salerno near Naples there 
were a number of excellent physicians. They attracted people 




THE MEDIAEVAL LABORATORY 



210 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



desirous of learning the medical profession and for almost a 
thousand years (until 1817) there was a university of Salerno 
which taught the wisdom of Hippocrates, the great Greek doc- 
tor who had practised his art in ancient Hellas in the fifth 
century before the birth of Christ. 

Then there was Abelard, the j'oung priest from Brittany, 
who early in the twelfth century began to lecture on theology 
and logic in Paris. Thousands of eager young men flocked 
to the French city to hear him. Other priests who disagreed 
with him stepped forward to explain their point of view. Paris 
was soon filled with a clamouring multitude of Englishmen and 
Germans and Italians and students from Sweden and Hungary 
and around the old cathedral which stood on a little island in 
the Seine there grew the famous University of Paris. 

In Bologna in Italy, a monk by the name of Gratian had 
compiled a text-book for those whose business it was to know 
the laws of the church. Young priests and many laymen then 
came from all over Europe to hear Gratian explain his ideas. 
To protect themselves against the landlords and the innkeepers 
and the boarding-house ladies of the city, they formed a cor- 
poration (or University) and behold the beginning of the uni- 
versity of Bologna. 

Next there was a quarrel in 
the University of Paris. We do 
not know what caused it, but a 
number of disgruntled teachers 
together with their pupils 
crossed the channel and found a 
hospitable home in a little village 
on the Thames called Oxford, 
and in this way the famous Uni- 
versity of Oxford came into be- 
ing. In the same way, in the 
year 1222, there had been a split 
in the University of Bologna. 
The discontented teachers ( again 
followed by their pupils) had the renaissance 




THE RENAISSANCE 211 

moved to Padua and their proud city thenceforward boasted 
of a university of its own. And so it went from Valladolid in 
Spain to Cracow in distant Poland and from Poitiers in France 
to Rostock in Germany. 

It is quite true that much of the teaching done by these 
early professors would sound absurd to our ears, trained to 
listen to logarithms and geometrical theorems. The point, 
however, which I want to make is this — the Middle Ages and 
especially the thirteenth century were not a time when the 
world stood entirely still. Among the younger generation, 
there was life, there was enthusiasm, and there was a restless 
if somewhat bashful asking of questions. And out of this 
turmoil grew the Renaissance. 

But just before the curtain went down upon the last scene 
of the Mediaeval world, a solitary figure crossed the stage, of 
whom you ought to know more than his mere name. This 
man was called Dante. He was the son of a Florentine lawyer 
who belonged to the Alighieri family and he saw the light of 
day in the year 1265. He grew up in the city of his ancestors 
while Giotto was painting his stories of the life of St. Francis 
of Assisi upon the walls of the Church of the Holy Cross, but 
often when he went to school, his frightened eyes would see the 
puddles of blood which told of the terrible and endless warfare 
that raged forever between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, 
the followers of the Pope and the adherents of the Emperors. 

When he grew up, he became a Guelph, because his father 
had been one before him, just as an American boy might be- 
come a Democrat or a Republican, simply because his father 
had happened to be a Democrat or a Republican. But after a 
few years, Dante saw that Italy, unless united under a single 
head, threatened to perish as a victim of the disordered jeal- 
ousies of a thousand little cities. Then he became a Ghibelline. 

He looked for help beyond the Alps. He hoped that a 
mighty emperor might come and re-establish unity and order. 
Alas! he hoped in vain. The Ghibellines were driven out of 
Florence in the year 1302. From that time on until the day 
of his death amidst the dreary ruins of Ravenna, in the year 
1321, Dante was a homeless wanderer, eating the bread of 



212 



THE STORY OF MiANKIND 



charity at the table of rich patrons whose names would have 
sunk into the deepest pit of oblivion but for this single fact, 
that they had been kind to a poet in his misery. During the 
many years of exile, Dante felt compelled to justify himself 

and his actions when he had 

been a political leader in his 
home-town, and when he had 
spent his days walking along 
the banks of the Arno that he 
might catch a glimpse of the 
lovely Beatrice Portinari, who 
died the wife of another man, a 
dozen years before the Ghibel- 
line disaster. 

He had failed in the ambi- 
tions of his career. He had 
faithfully served the town of 
his birth and before a corrupt 
court he had been accused of 
stealing the public funds and 
had been condemned to be 
burned alive should he venture 
back within the realm of the 
city of Florence. To clear 
himself before his own con- 
science and before his contem- 
poraries, Dante then created 
an Imaginary World and with 
great detail he described the 
circimistances which had led to 
his defeat and depicted the hopeless condition of greed and lust 
and hatred which had turned his fair and beloved Italy into a 
battlefield for the pitiless mercenaries of wicked and selfish 
tyrants. 

He tells us how on the Thursday before Easter of the year 
1300 he had lost his way in a dense forest and how he found 
his path barred by a leopard and a lion and a wolf. He gave 
himself up for lost when a white figure appeared amidst the 




DANTE 



THE RENAISSANCE 213 

trees. It was Virgil, the Roman poet and philosopher, sent 
upon his errand of mercy by the Blessed Virgin and by Bea- 
trice, who from high Heaven watched over the fate of her 
true lover. Virgil then takes Dante through Purgatory and 
through Hell. Deeper and deeper the path leads them until 
they reach the lowest pit where Lucifer himself stands frozen 
into the eternaljce surrounded by the most terrible of sinners, 
traitors and liars and those who have achieved fame and 
success by lies and by deceit. But before the two wanderers 
have reached this terrible spot, Dante has met all those who 
in some way or other have played a role in the history of his 
beloved city. Emperors and Popes, dashing knights and 
whining usurers, they are all there, doomed to eternal punish- 
ment or awaiting the day of deliverance, when they shall 
leave Purgatory for Heaven. 

It is a curious story. It is a handbook of everything the 
people of the thirteenth century did and felt and feared and 
prayed for. Through it all moves the figure of the lonely 
Florentine exile, forever followed by the shadow of his own 
despair. 

And behold! when the gates of death were closing upon 
the sad poet of the Middle Ages, the portals of life swung 
open to the child who was to be the first of the men of the 
Benaissance. That was Francesco Petrarca, the son of the 
notary public of the little town of Arezzo. 

Francesco's father had belonged to the same political party 
as Dante. He too had been exiled and thus it happened that 
Petrarca (or Petrarch, as we call him) was born away from 
Florence. At the age of fifteen he was sent to Montpellier 
in France that he might become a lawyer like his father. But 
the boy did not want to be a jurist. He hated the law. He 
wanted to be a scholar and a poet — and because he wanted to 
be a scholar and a poet beyond everything else, he became one, 
as people of a strong will are apt to do. He made long 
voyages, copying manuscripts in Flanders and in the cloisters 
along the Bhine and in Paris and Liege and finally in Bome. 
Then he went to live in a lonely valley of the wild mountains 



214 [THE STORY OF MANKIND 

of Vaucluse, and there he studied and wrote and soon he had 
become so famous for his verse and for his learning that both 
the University of Paris and the king of Naples invited him 
to come and teach their students and subjects. On the way 
to his new job, he was obliged to pass through Rome. The 
people had heard of his fame as an editor of half -forgotten 
Roman authors. They decided to honour him and in the 
ancient forum of the Imperial City, Petrarch was crowned with 
the laurel wreath of the Poet. 

From that moment on, his life was an endless career of 
honour and appreciation. Hejaa:Qte the things which people 
wanted most to hear. They were tired of theological dispu- 
tations. Poor Dante could wander through hell as much as 
he wanted. But Petrarch wrote of love and of nature and the 
sun and never mentioned those gloomy things which seemed 
to have been the stock in trade of the last generation. And 
when Petrarch came to a city, all the people flocked out to 
meet him and he was received like a conquering hero. If he 
happened to bring his young friend Boccaccio, the story teller, 
with him, so much the better. They were both men of their 
time, full of curiosity, willing to read everything once, digging 
in forgotten and musty libraries that they might find still an- 
other manuscript of Virgil or Ovid or Lucrece or any of the 
other old Latin poets. They were good Christians. Of course 
they were ! Everyone was. But no need of going around with 
a long face and wearing a dirty coat just because some day 
or other you were going to die. Life was good. People were 
meant to be happy. You desired proof of this? Very well. 
Take a spade and dig into the soil. What did you find? 
Beautiful old statues. Beautiful old vases. Ruins of ancient 
buildings. All these things were made by the people of the 
greatest empire that ever existed. They ruled all the world 
for a thousand years. They were strong and rich and hand- 
some (just look at that bust of the Emperor Augustus!) . Of 
course, they were not Christians and they would never be 
able to enter Heaven. At best they would spend their days 
in purgatory, where Dante had just paid them a visit. 



THE RENAISSANCE 215 

But who cared? To have lived in a world like that of 
ancient Rome was heaven enough for any mortal being. And 
anyway, we live but once. Let us be happy and cheerful for 
the mere joy of existence. 

Such, in short, was the spirit that had begun to fill the 
narrow and crooked streets of the many little Italian cities. 

You know what we mean by the "bicycle craze" or the 
"automobile craze." Some one invents a bicycle. People who 
for hundreds of thousands of years have moved slowly and 
painfully from one place to another go "crazy" over the pros- 
pect of rolling rapidty and easily over hill and dale. Then 
a clever mechanic makes the first automobile. No longer is it 
necessary to pedal and pedal and pedal. You just sit and 
let little drops of gasoline do the work for you. Then every- 
body wants an automobile. Everybody talks about Rolls- 
Royces and Flivvers and carburetors and mileage and oil. Ex- 
plorers penetrate into the hearts of unknown countries that 
they may find new supplies of gas. Forests arise in Sumatra 
and in the Congo to supply us with rubber. Rubber and oil -^ 
become so valuable that people fight wars for their possession. > 
The whole world is "automobile mad" and little children can 
say "car" before they learn to whisper "papa" and "mamma." 

In the fourteenth century, the Italian people went crazy 
about the newly discovered beauties of the buried world of 
Rome. Soon their enthusiasm was shared by all the people of 
western Europe. The finding of an unknown manuscript be- 
came the excuse for a civic holiday. The man who wrote a 
grammar became as popular as the fellow who nowadays invents 
a new spark-plug. The humanist, the scholar who devoted his 
time and his energies to a study of "homo" or mankind (instead 
of wasting his hours upon fruitless theological investigations), 
that man was regarded with greater honour and a deeper re- 
spect than was ever bestowed upon a hero who had just con- 
quered all the Cannibal Islands. 

In the midst of this intellectual upheaval, an event occurred 
which greatly favoured the study of the ancient philosophers 
and authors. The Turks were renewing their attacks upon 



216 THE STORY OF IMiANKIND 

Europe. Constantinople, capital of the last remnant of the 
original Roman Empire, was hard pressed. In the year 1393 
the Emperor, Manuel Paleologue, sent Emmanuel Chrysoloras 
to western Europe to explain the desperate state of old Byzan- 
tium and to ask for aid. This aid never came. The Roman 
Catholic world was more than willing to see the Greek Catholic 
world go to the punishment that awaited such wicked heretics. 
But however indifferent western Europe might be to the fate 
of the Byzantines, they were greatly interested in the ancient 
Greeks whose colonists had founded the city on the Bosphorus 
ten centuries after the Trojan war. They wanted to learn 
Greek that they might read Ai'istotle and Homer and Plato. 
They wanted to learn it very badly, but they had no books and 
no grammars and no teachers. The magistrates of Florence 
heard of the visit of Chrysoloras. The people of their city 
were "crazy to learn Greek." Would he please come and 
teach them? He would, and behold! the iirst professor of 
Greek teaching^alpha, beta, gamma to hundreds of eager young 
men, begging their way to the city of the Arno, living in stables 
and in dingy attics that they night learn how to decline the verb 
iraiSevo} TratSeuets TratSeuet and enter into the companionship of 
Sophocles and Homer. 

Meanwhile in the universities, the old schoolmen, teaching 
their ancient theology and their antiquated logic; explaining 
the hidden mysteries of the old Testament and discussing the 
strange science of their Greek- Arabic-Spanish-Latin edition of 
Aristotle, looked on in dismay and horror. Next, they turned 
angry. This thing was going too far. The yoimg men were 
deserting the lecture halls of the established universities to 
go and listen to some wild-eyed "humanist" with his new- 
fangled notions about a "reborn civilization." 

They went to the authorities. They complained. But one 
cannot force an unwilling horse to drink and one claanot 
make unwilling ears listen to something which does not really 
interest them. The schoolmen were losing ground rapidly. Here 
and there they scored a short victory. They combined forces 
with those fanatics who hated to see other people enjoy a 



THE RENAISSANCE 217 

happiness which was foreign to their own souls. In Florence, 
the centre of the Great Rebirth, a terrible fight was fought 
between the old order and the new. A Dominican monk, sour 
of face and bitter in his hatred of beauty, was the leader of 
the mediaeval rear-guard. He fought a valiant battle. Day 
after day he thundered his warnings of God's holy wrath 
through the wide halls of Santa Maria del Fiore. "Repent," 
he cried, "repent of your godlessness, of your joy in things 
that are not holy!" He began to hear voices and to see flaming 
swords that flashed through the sky. He preached to the 
little children that they might not fall into the errors of these 
ways which were leading their fathers to perdition. He or- 
ganised companies of boy-scouts, devoted to the service of the 
great God whose prophet he claimed to be. In a sudden mo- 
ment of frenzy, the frightened people promised to do penance 
for their wicked love of beauty and pleasure. They carried 
their books and their statues and their paintings to the market 
place and celebrated a wild "carnival of the vanities" with holy 
singing and most unholy dancing, while Savonarola applied his 
torch to the accumulated treasures. 

But when the ashes cooled down, the people began to realise 
what they had lost. This terrible fanatic had made them de- 
stroy that which they had come to love above all things. They 
turned against him, Savonarola was thrown into jail. He was 
tortured. But he refused to repent for anything he had done. 
He was an honest man. He had tried to live a holy life. He 
had willingly destroyed those who deliberately refused to 
share his own point of view. It had been his duty to eradicate 
evil wherever he found it. A love of heathenish books and 
heathenish beauty in the eyes of this faithful son of the Church, 
had been an evil. But he stood alone. He had fought the 
battle of a time that was dead and gone. The Pope in Rome 
never moved a finger to save him. On the contrary, he ap- 
proved of his "faithful Florentines" when they dragged Savon- 
arola to the gallows, hanged him and burned his body amidst 
the cheerful howling and yelling of the mob. 

It was a sad ending, but quite inevitable. Savonarola 



218 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

would have been a great man in the eleventh century. In the 
fifteenth century he was merely the leader of a lost cause. 
For better or worse, the Middle Ages had come to an end when 
the Pope had turned humanist and when the Vatican became 
the most important museum of Roman and Greek antiquities. 



THE AGE OF EXPRESSION 



THE PEOPLE BEGAN TO FEEL THE NEED OF 
GIVING EXPRESSION TO THEIR NEWLY 
DISCOVERED JOY OF LIVING. THEY EX- 
PRESSED THEIR HAPPINESS IN POETRY 
AND IN SCULPTURE AND IN ARCHITEC- 
TURE AND IN PAINTING AND IN THE 
BOOKS THEY PRINTED 

In the year 1471 there died a pious old man who had spent 
seventy-two of his ninety-one years behind the sheltering walls 
of the cloister of Mount St. Agnes near the good town of 
Zwolle, the old Dutch Hanseatic city on the river Ysel. He 
was known as Brother Thomas and because he had been born 
in the village of Kempen, he was called Thomas a Kempis. 
At the age of twelve he had been sent to Deventer, where 
Gerhard Groot, a brilliant graduate of the universities of 
Paris, Cologne and Prague, and famous as a wandering 
preacher, had founded the Society of the Brothers of the 
Common Life. The good brothers were humble laymen who 
tried to live the simple life of the early Apostles of Christ 
while working at their regular jobs as carpenters and house- 
painters and stone masons. They maintained an excellent 
school, that deserving boys of poor parents miglit be taught 
the wisdom of the Fathers of the church. Atn;his school, 
little Thomas had learned how to conjugate Latin verbs and 
how to copy manuscripts. Then he had taken his vows, had 
' 219 



220 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



put his little bundle of books upon his back, had wandered to 
Zwolle and with a sigh of relief he had closed the door upon a 
turbulent world which did not attract him. 

Thomas lived in an age of turmoil, pestilence and sudden 
death. In central Europe, in Bohemia, the devoted disciples of ^ 
Johannus Huss, the friend aiid follower of John Wy cliff e, the ■^\ 
English reformer, were avenging with a terrible warfare the 
. death of their beloved leader who had 
been bm-ned at the stake by order of 
that same Council of Constance, 
which had promised him a safe-con- 
duct if he would come to Switzerland 
and explain his doctrines to the Pope, 
the Emperor, twenty-three cardinals, 
thirtj^-three archbishops and bishops, 
one hundred and fifty abbots and 
more than a hundred princes and 
dukes who had gathered together to 
reform their church. 

In the west, France had been 
fighting for a hundred years that 
she might drive the English from 
her territories and just then was 
saved from utter defeat by the for- 
tunate appearance of Joan of Arc. 
And no sooner had this struggle come 
to an end than France and Burgundy 
were at each other's throats, engaged 
upon a struggle of life and death 
for the supremacy of western Europe. 

In the south, a Pope at Rome was calling the curses of 
Heaven down upon a second Pope who resided at Avignon, 
in southern France, and who retaliated in kind. In the 
far east the Turks were destroying the last remnants of the 
Roman Empire and the Russians had started upon a final 
crusade to crush the power of their Tartar masters. 




JOHN HUSS 



^'~\,x 




THE CATHEDRAL 



THE AGE OF EXPRESSION 221 

But of all this, Brother Thomas in his quiet cell never 
heard. He had his manuscripts and his own thoughts and 
he was contented. He poured his love of God into a little 
volume. He called it the Imitation of Christ. It has since 
been translated into more languages than any other book 
save the Bible. It has been read by quite as many people 
as ever studied the Holy Scriptures. It has influenced the 
lives of countless millions. And it was the work of a man 
whose highest ideal of existence was expressed in the simple 
wish that "he might quietly spend his days sitting in a little 
corner with a little book." 

Good Brother Thomas represented the purest ideals of the 
Middle Ages. Surrounded on all sides by the forces of the 
victorious Renaissance, with the humanists loudly proclaim- 
ing the coming of modern times, the Middle Ages gathered 
strength for a last sally. Monasteries were reformed. Monks 
gave up the habits of riches and vice. Simple, straight- 
forward and honest men, by the example of their blameless 
and devout lives, tried to bring the people back to the ways of 
righteousness and humble resignation to the will of God. But 
all to no avail. The new world rushed past these good people. 
The days of quiet meditation were gone. The great era of 
"expression" had begim. 

Here and now let me say that I am sorry that I must use 
so many "big words." I wish that I could write this history in 
words of one syllable. But it cannot be done. You cannot 
write a text-book of geometry without reference to a hypote- 
nuse and triangles and a rectangular parallelopiped. You 
simply have to learn what those words mean or do without 
mathematics. In history (and in all life) you will eventually 
be obliged to learn the meaning of many strange words of 
Latin and Greek origin. Why not do it now? 

When I say that the Renaissance was an era of expression, 
I mean this: People were no longer contented to be the 
audience and sit still while the emperor and the pope told 
them what to do and what to think. They wanted to be actors 



222 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



upon the stage of life. They insisted upon giving "expression" 
to their own individual ideas. If a man happened to be in- 
terested in statesmanship like the Florentine historian, Niccolo 
Macchiavelh, then he "expressed" himself in his books which 
revealed his own idea of a successful state and an efficient 
ruler. If on the other hand he had a liking for painting, he 



Oa/£ Al/i/J COhJBS A JiooK 







THE MANUSCRIPT AND THE PRINTED BOOK 



"expressed" his love for beautiful lines and lovely colours in 
the pictures which have made the names of Giotto, Fra An- 
gelico, Rafael and a thousand others household words wher- 
ever people have learned to care for those things which express 
a true and lasting beauty. 

If this love for colour and line happened to be combined with 
an interest in mechanics and hydraulics, the result was a Leo- 
nardo da Vinci, who painted his pictures, experimented with 
his balloons and flying machines, drained the marshes of the 
Lombardian plains and "expressed" his joy and interest in all 



THE AGE OF EXPRESSION 22S 

things between Heaven and Earth in prose, in painting, in 
sculpture and in curiously conceived engines. When a man of 
gigantic strength, like Michael Angelo, found the brush and 
the palette too soft for his strong hands, he turned to sculpture 
and to architecture, and hacked the most terrific creatures out 
of heavy blocks of marble and drew the plans for the church 
of St. Peter, the most concrete "expression" of the glories 
of the triumphant church. And so it went. 

All Italy (and very soon all of Europe) was filled with 
men and women who lived that they might add their mite to 
the sum total of our accumulated treasures of knowledge and 
beautjr and wisdom. In Germany, in the city of Mainz, Johann 
zum Gansefleisch, commonly known as Johann Gutenberg, had 
just invented a new method of copying books. He had studied 
the old woodcuts and had perfected a system by which in- 
dividual letters of soft lead could be placed in such a way that 
they formed words and whole pages. It is true, he soon lost 
all his money in a law-suit which had to do with the original 
invention of the press. He died in poverty, but the "expres- 
sion" of his particular inventive genius lived after him. 

Soon Aldus in Venice and Etienne in Paris and Plantin in 
Antwerp and Froben in Basel were flooding the world with 
carefully edited editions of the classics printed in the Gothic 
letters of the Gutenberg Bible, or printed in the Italian type 
which we use in this book, or printed in Greek letters, or in 
Hebrew. 

Then the whole world became the eager audience of those 
who had something to say. The day when learning had been 
a monopoly of a privileged few came to an end. And the 
last excuse for ignorance was removed from this world, when 
Elzevier of Haarlem began to print his cheap and popular 
editions. Then Aristotle and Plato, Virgil and Horace and 
Pliny, all the goodly company of the ancient authors and 
philosophers and scientists, offered to become man's faithful 
friend in exchange for a few paltry pennies. Humanism had 
made all men free and equal before the printed word. 



THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 



BUT NOW THAT PEOPLE HAD BROKEN 
THROUGH THE BONDS OF THEIR NARROW 
MEDIEVAL LIMITATIONS, THEY HAD TO 
HAVE MORE ROOM FOR THEIR WANDER- 
INGS. THE EUROPEAN WORLD HAD 
GROWN TOO SMALL FOR THEIR AMBI- 
TIONS. IT WAS THE TIME OF THE GREAT 
VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY 

The Crusades had been a lesson in the liberal art of travel- 
ling. But very few people had ever ventured beyond the well- 
known beaten track which led from Venice to JafFe. In the 
thirteenth century the Polo brothers, merchants of Venice, 
had wandered across the great Mongolian desert and after 
climbing mountains as high as the moon, they had found their 
way to the court of the great Khan of Cathay, the mighty 
emperor of China. The son of ofie of the Polos, by the name 
of Marco, had written a book about their adventures, which 
covered a period of more than twenty years. The astonished 
world had gaped at his descriptions of the golden towers of 
the strange island of Zipangu, which was his Italian way of 
spelling Japan. Many people had wanted to go east, that 
they might find this gold-land and gi'ow rich. But the trip was 
too far and too dangerous and so they stayed at home. 

Of course, there was always the possibility of making the 

224 



THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 



225 



voyage by sea. But the sea was very unpopular in the Middle 
Ages and for many very good reasons. In the first place, ships 
were very small. The vessels on which Magellan made his 
famous trip around the world, which lasted many years, were 
not as large as a modern ferryboat. They carried from twenty 
to fifty men, who lived in dingy quarters (too low to allow any 
of them to stand up straight) and the sailors were obliged to 




MARCO POLO 



eat poorly cooked food as the kitchen arrangements were very 
bad and no fire could be made whenever the weather was the 
least bit rough. The mediaeval world knew how to pickle her- 
ring and how to dry fish. But there were no canned goods 
and fresh vegetables were never seen on the bill of fare as 
soon as the coast had been left behind. Water was carried in 
small barrels. It soon became stale and then tasted of rotten 
wood and iron rust and was full of slimy growing things. As 
the people of the Middle Ages knew nothing about microbes 



226 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

(Roger Bacon, the learned monk of the thirteenth century 
seems to have suspected their existence, but he wisely kept 
his discovery to himself) they often drank unclean water and 
sometimes the whole crew died of typhoid fever. Indeed the 
mortality on board the ships of the earliest navigators was 
terrible. Of.the two hundred sailors who in the year 1519 left 
Seville to accompany Magellan on his famous voyage around 
the world, only eighteen returned. As late as the seventeenth 
century when there was a brisk trade between western Europe 
and the Indies, a mortality of 40 percent was nothing unusual 
for a trip from Amsterdam to Batavia and back. The greater 
part of these victims died of scurvy, a disease which is caused 
by a lack of fresh vegetables and which affects the gums and 
poisons the blood until the patient dies of sheer exhaustion. 

Under those circumstances you will understand that the sea 
did not attract the best elements of the population. Famous 
discoverers like Magellan and Columbus and Vasco da Gama 
travelled at the head of crews that were almost entirely com- 
posed of ex- jailbirds, future murderers and pickpockets out 
of a job. 

These navigators certainly deserve our admiration for the 
courage and the pluck with which they accomplished their 
hopeless tasks in the face of difficulties of which the people of 
our own comfortable world can have no conception. Their 
ships were leaky. The rigging was clumsy. Since the middle 
of the thirteenth century they had possessed some sort of a 
compass (which had come to Europe from China by way of 
Arabia and the Crusades ) but they had very bad and incorrect 
maps. They set their course by God and by guess. If luck 
was with them they returned after one or two or three years. 
In the other case, their bleached bones remained behind on 
some lonely beach. But they were true pioneers. They gam- 
bled with luck. Life to them was a glorious adventure. And 
all the suffering, the thirst and the hunger and the pain were 
forgotten when their eyes beheld the dim outlines of a new coast 
or the placid waters of an ocean that had lain forgotten since 
the beginning of time. 



THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 



227 



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HOW THE WORLD GREW LARGER 



228 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Again I wish that I could make this book a thousand pages 
long. The subject of the early discoveries is so fascinating. 
But history, to give you a true idea of past times, should be 
like those etchings which Rembrandt used to make. It should 
cast a vivid light on certain important causes, on those which 
are best and greatest. All the rest should be left in the shadow 
or should be indicated by a few lines. And in this chapter I 
can only give you a short list of the most important discoveries. 

Keep in mind that all during the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries the navigators were trying to accomplish just one 
thing — they wanted to find a comfortable and safe road to the 
empire of Cathay (China), to the island of Zipangu (Japan) 
and to those mysterious islands, where grew the spices which 
the mediaeval world had come to like since the days of the 
Crusades, and which people needed in those days before the 
introduction of cold storage, when meat and fish spoiled very 
quickly and could only be eaten after a liberal sprinkling of 
pepper or nutmeg. 

The Venetians and the Genoese had been the great navi- 
gators of the Mediterranean, but the honour for exploring the 
coast of the Atlantic goes to the Portuguese. Spain and Por- 
tugal were full of that patriotic energy which their age-old 
struggle against the Moorish invaders had developed. Such 
energy, once it exists, can easily be forced into new channels. 
In the thirteenth century. King Alphonso III had conquered 
the kingdom of Algarve in the southwestern corner of the 
Spanish peninsula and had added it to his dominions. In the 
next century, the Portuguese had turned the tables on the 
Mohammedans, had crossed the straits of Gibraltar and had 
taken possession of Ceuta, opposite the Arabic city of Ta'Rifa 
(a word which in Arabic means "inventory" and which by way 
of the Spanish language has come down to us as "tariff,") and 
Tangiers, which became the capital of an African addition to 
Algarve. 

They were ready to begin their career as explorers. 

In the year 1415, Prince Henry, known as Henry the 



THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 229 

Navigator, the son of John I of Portugal and Philippa, the 
daughter of John of Gaunt (about whom you can read in 
Richard II, a play by William Shakespeare) began to make 
preparations for the systematic exploration of northwestern 
Africa. Before this, that hot and sandy coast had been visited 
by the Phoenicians and by the Norsemen, who remembered it 
as the home of the hairy "wild man" whom we have come to 
know as the orang-outang. One after another. Prince Henry 
and his captains discovered the Canary Islands — re-discovered 
the island of Madeira which a century before had been visited 
by a Genoese ship, carefully chartered the Azores which had 
been vaguely known to both the Portuguese and the Spaniards, 
and caught a glimpse of the mouth of the Senegal River on 
the west coast of Africa, which they supposed to be the western 
mouth of the Nile. At last, by the middle of the Fifteenth 
Century, they saw Cape Verde, or the Green Cape, and the 
Cape Verde Islands, which lie almost halfway between the 
coast of Africa and Brazil. 

But Henry did not restrict himself in his investigations to 
the waters of the Ocean. He was Grand Master of the Order 
of Christ. This was a Portuguese continuation of the cru- 
sading order of the Templars which had been abolished by 
Pope Clement V in the year 1312 at the request of King 
Philip the Fair of France, who had improved the occasion by 
burning his own Templars at the stake and stealing all their 
possessions. Prince Henry used the revenues of the domains 
of his religious order to equip several expeditions which ex- 
plored the hinterland of the Sahara and of the coast of Guinea. 

But he was still very much a son of the Middle Ages and 
spent a great deal of time and wasted a lot of money upon a 
search for the mysterious "Prester John," the mythical Chris- 
tian Priest who was said to be the Emperor of a vast empire 
"situated somewhere in the east." The story of this strange 
potentate had first been told in Europe in the middle of the 
twelfth century. For three hundred years people had tried 
to find "Prester John" and his descendants. Henry took part 



230 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



in the search. Thirty years after his death, the riddle was 

solved. 

I In the year 1486 Bartholomew Diaz, trying to find the land 



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THE WORLD OF COLUMBUS 



of Prester John by sea, had reached the southernmost point 
of Africa. At first he called it the Storm Cape, on account of 
the strong winds which had prevented him from continuing his 



THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 231 

voyage toward the east, but the Lisbon pilots who understood 
the importance of this discovery in their quest for the India 
water route, changed the name into that of the Cape of Good 
Hope. 

One year later, Pedro de Covilham, provided with letters 
of credit on the house of Medici, started upon a similar mis- 
sion by land. He crossed the Mediterranean and after leaving 
Egypt, he travelled southward. He reached Aden, and from 
there, travelling through the waters of the Persian Gulf which 
few white men had seen since the days of Alexander the Great, 
eighteen centuries before, he visited Goa and Calicut on the 
coast of India where he got a great deal of news about the 
island of the Moon (Madagascar) which was supposed to lie 
halfway between Africa and India. Then he returned, paid 
a secret visit to Mecca and to Medina, crossed the Red Sea 
once more and in the year 1490 he discovered the realm of 
Prester John, who was no one less than the Black Negus (or 
King) of Abyssinia, whose ancestors had adopted Christianity 
in the fourth century, seven hundred years before the Christian 
missionaries had found their way to Scandinavia. 

These many voyages had convinced the Portuguese geog- 
raphers and cartographers that while the voyage to the Indies 
by an eastern sea-route was possible, it was by no means easy. 
Then there arose a great debate. Some people wanted to con- 
tinue the explorations east of the Cape of Good Hope. Others 
said, "No, we must sail west across the Atlantic and then we 
shall reach Cathay." 

Let us state right here that most intelligent people of that 
day were firmly convinced that the earth was not as flat as a 
pancake but was round. The Ptolomean system of the universe, 
invented and duly described by Claudius Ptolomy, the great 
Egyptian geographer, who had lived in the second century of 
our era, which had served the simple needs of the men of the 
Middle Ages, had long been discarded by the scientists of the 
Renaissance. They had accepted the doctrine of the Polish 
mathematician, Nicolaus Copernicus, whose studies had con- 



232 THE STORY OF MIANKIND 

vinced him that the earth was one of a number of round planets 
which turned around the sun, a discovery which he did not ven- 
ture to pubHsh for thirty-six years (it was printed in 1543, 
the year of his death) from fear of the Holy Inquisition, a 
Papal court which had been established in the thirteenth cen- 
tury when the heresies of the Albigenses and the Waldenses 
in France and in Italy (very mild heresies of devoutly pious 
people who did not believe in private property and preferred 
to live in Christ-like poverty) had for a moment threatened the 
absolute power of the bishops of Rome. But the belief in the 
roundness of the earth was common among the nautical ex- 
perts and, as I said, they were now debating the respective 
advantages of the eastern and the western routes. 

Among the advocates of the western route was a Genoese 
mariner by the name of Cristoforo Colombo. He was the son 
of a wool merchant. He seems to have been a student at the 
University of Pavia where he specialised in mathematics and 
geometry. Then he took up his father's trade but soon we find 
him in Chios in the eastern Mediterranean travelling on busi- 
ness. Thereafter we hear of voyages to England but whether 
he went north in search of wool or as the captain of a ship we 
do not know. In February of the year 1477, Colombo (if we 
are to believe his own words) visited Iceland, but very likely 
he only got as far as the Faroe Islands which are cold enough 
in February to be mistaken for Iceland by any one. Here 
Colombo met the descendants of those brave Norsem^en who 
in the tenth century had settled in Greenland and who had 
visited America in the eleventh century, when Leif's vessel 
had been blown to the coast of Vineland, or Labrador. 

What had become of those far western colonies no one 
knew. The American colony of Thorfinn Karlsefne, the hus- 
band of the widow of Leif's brother Thorstein, founded in the 
year 1003, had been discontinued three years later on account 
of the hostility of the Esquimaux. As for Greenland, not a 
word had been heard from the settlers since the year 1440. 
Very likely the Greenlanders had all died of the Black Death, 



THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 



233 



which had just killed half the people of Norway. However 
that might be, the tradition of a "vast land in the distant west" 
still survived among the people of the Faroe and Iceland, and 



■^ii^^^'K4 5^e^^7iV!^«'>fli<vB^^ • r^^'{;^' 




THE GREAT DISCOVERIES, WESTERN HEMISPHERE 

Colombo must have heard of it. He gathered further informa- 
tion among the fishermen of the northern Scottish islands and 
then went to Portugal where he married the daughter of one 



234 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



of the captains who had served under Prince Henry the 
Navigator. 

From that moment on (the year 1478) he devoted himself 




THE GREAT DISCOVERIES, EASTERN HEMISPHERE 

to the quest of the western route to the Indies. He sent his 
plans for such a voyage to the courts of Portugal and Spain. 
The Portuguese, who felt certain that they possessed a monop- 



THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 235 

oly of the eastern route, would not listen to his plans. In 
Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, whose 
marriage in 1469 had made Spain into a single kingdom, were 
busy driving the Moors from their last stronghold, Grenada. 
They had no money for risky expeditions. They needed every 
peseta for their soldiers. 

Few people were ever forced to fight as desperately for 
their ideas as this brave Italian. But the story of Colombo 
(or Colon or Columbus, as we call him,) is too well known to 
bear repeating. The Moors surrendered Grenada on the sec- 
ond of January of the year 1492. In the month of April of the 
same year, Columbus signed a contract with the King and 
Queen of Spain. On Friday, the 3rd of August, he left Palos 
with three httle ships and a crew of 88 men, many of whom 
were criminals who had been offered indemnity of punishment 
if they joined the expedition. At two o'clock in the morning 
of Friday, the 12th of October, Columbus discovered land. On 
the fourth of January of the year 1493, Columbus waved fare- 
well to the 44 men of the little fortress of La Navidad (none 
of whom was ever again seen alive) and returned homeward. 
By the middle of February he reached the Azores where the 
Portuguese threatened to throw him into gaol. On the fifteenth 
of March, 1493, the admiral reached Palos and together with 
his Indians ( for he was convinced that he had discovered some 
outlying islands of the Indies and called the natives red 
Indians) he hastened to Barcelona to tell his faithful patrons 
that he had been successful and that the road to the gold and 
the silver of Cathay and Zipangu was at the disposal of their 
most Catholic Majesties. 

Alas, Columbus never knew the truth. Towards the end 
of his life, on his fourth voyage, when he had touched the main- 
land of South America, he may have suspected that all was 
not well with his discovery. But he died in the firm belief 
that there was no solid continent between Europe and Asia 
and that he had found the direct route to China. 

Meanwhile, the Portuguese, sticking to their eastern route, 



236 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

had been more fortunate. In the year 1498, Vasco da Gama 
had been able to reach the coast of Malabar and return safely 
to Lisbon with a cargo of spice. In the year 1502 he had 
repeated the visit. But along the western route, the work of 
exploration had been most disappointing. In 1497 and 1498 
John and Sebastian Cabot had tried to find a passage to Japan 
but they had seen nothing but the snowbound coasts and the 
rocks of Newfoundland, which had first been sighted by the 
Northmen, five centuries before. Amerigo Vespucci, a Floren- 
tine who became the Pilot Major of Spain, and who gave his 
name to our continent, had explored the coast of Brazil, but 
had found not a trace of the Indies. 

In the year 1513, seven years after the death of Columbus, 
the truth at last began to dawn upon the geographers of 
Europe. Vasco Nunez de Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of 
Panama, had climbed the famous peak in Darien, and had 
looked down upon a vast expanse of water which seemed to 
suggest the existence of another ocean. 

Finally in the year 1519 a fleet of five small Spanish ships 
under command of the Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand de 
Magellan, sailed westward ( and not eastward since that route, 
was absolutely in the hands of the Portuguese who allowed no 
competition) in search of the Spice Islands. Magellan crossed 
the Atlantic between Africa and Brazil and sailed southward. 
He reached a narrow channel between the southernmost point 
of Patagonia, the "land of the people with the big feet," and 
the Fire Island (so named on account of a fire, the only sign of 
the existence of natives, which the sailors watched one night). 
For almost five weeks the ships of Magellan were at the mercy 
of the terrible storms and blizzards which swept through the 
straits. A mutiny broke out among the sailors. Magellan 
suppressed it with terrible severity and sent two of his men 
on shore where they were left to repent of their sins at leisure. 
At last the storms quieted down, the channel broadened, and 
Magellan entered a new ocean. Its waves were quiet and 
placid. He called it the Peaceful Sea, the Mare Pacifico. 



THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 



237 



Then he continued in a western direction. He sailed for 
ninety-eight days without seeing land. His people almost 
perished from hunger and thirst and ate the rats that infested 
the ships, and when these were all gone they chewed pieces of 
sail to still their gnawing hunger. 

In March of the year 1521 they saw land. Magellan called 




MAGELLAN 



it the land of the Ladrones (which means robbers) because the 
natives stole everything they could lay hands on. Then fur- 
ther westward to the Spice Islands! 

Again land was sighted. A group of lonely islands. Ma- 
gellan called them the Philippines, after PhiHp, the son of his 
master Charles V, the Philip II of unpleasant historical mem- 
ory. At first INIagellan was well received, but when he used 
the guns of his ships to make Christian converts he was killed 



238 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

by the aborigines, together with a number of his captains and 
sailors. The survivors burned one of the three remaining ships 
and continued their voyage. They found the Moluccas, the 
famous Spice Islands; they sighted Borneo and reached Tidor. 
.There, one of the two ships, too leaky to be of further use, 
remained behind with her crew. The "Vittoria," under Sebas- 
tian del Cano, crossed the Indian Ocean, missed seeing the 
northern coast of Australia (which was not discovered until 
the first half of the seventeenth century when ships of the 
Dutch East India Company explored this flat and inhospitable 
land), and after great hardships reached Spain. 

This was the most notable of all voyages. It had taken 
three years. It had been accomplished at a great cost both of 
men and money. But it had established the fact that the earth 
was round and that the new lands discovered by Columbus were 
not a part of the Indies but a separate continent. From that 
time on, Spain and Portugal devoted all their energies to the 
development of their Indian and American trade. To prevent 
an armed conflict between the rivals, Pope Alexander VI (the 
only avowed heathen who was ever elected to this most holy 
oflSce) had obligingly divided the world into two equal parts 
by a line of demarcation which followed the 50th degree of 
longitude west of Greenwich, the so-called division of Tor- 
desillas of 1494. The Portuguese were to establish their colo- 
nies to the east of this line, the Spaniards were to have theirs 
to the west. This accounts for the fact that the entire Ameri- 
can continent with the exception of Brazil became Spanish and 
that all of the Indies and most of Africa became Portuguese 
until the English and the Dutch colonists (who had no respect 
for Papal decisions) took these possessions away in the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries. 

When news of the discovery of Columbus reached the 
Rialto of Venice, the Wall street of the Middle Ages, there 
was a terrible panic. Stocks and bonds went down 40 and 50 
percent. ATter^ short while, when it appeared that Columbus 
had failed to find the road to Cathay, the Venetian merchants 




A XEW WORLD 



THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 239 

recovered from their fright. But the voyages of da Gama and 
Magellan proved the practical possibilities of an eastern water- 
route to the Indies. Then the rulers of Genoa and Venice, 
the two great commercial centres of the Middle Ages and the 
Renaissance, began to be sorry that they had refused to listen 
to Columbus. But it was too late. Their Mediterranean be- 
came an inland sea. The overland trade to the Indies and 
China dwindled to insignificant proportions. The old days 
of Italian glory were gone. The Atlantic became the new 
centre of commerce and therefore the centre of civilisation. 
It has remained so ever since. 

See how strangely civilisation has progressed since those 
early days, fifty centuries before, when the inhabitants of the 
Valley of the Nile began to keep a written record of history. 
From the river Nile, it went to Mesopotamia, the land be- 
tween the rivers. Then came the turn of Crete and Greece and 
Rome. An inland sea became the centre of trade and the cities 
along the Mediterranean were the home of art and science and 
philosophy and learning. In the sixteenth century it moved 
westward once more and made the countries that border upon 
the Atlantic become the masters of the earth. 

There are those who say that the world war and the suicide 
of the great European nations has greatly diminished the 
importance of the Atlantic Ocean. They expect to see civilisa- 
tion cross the American continent and find a new home in the 
Pacific. But I doubt this. 

The westward trip was accompanied by a steady increase in 
the size of ships and a broadening of the knowledge of the navi- 
gators. The flat-bottomed vessels of the Nile and the Euphra- 
tes were replaced by the sailing vessels of the Phoenicians, the 
iEgeans, the Greeks, the Carthaginians and the Romans. 
These in turn were discarded for the square rigged vessels of 
the Portuguese and the Spaniards. And the latter were driven 
from the ocean by the full-rigged craft of the English and the 
Dutch. 

At present, however, civilisation no longer depends upon 



240 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

ships. Aircraft has taken and will continue to take the place 
of the sailing vessel and the steamer. The next centre of 
civilisation will dei)end upon the development of aircraft and 
water-power. And the sea, once more shall be the undisturbed 
home of the little fishes, who once upon a time shared their deep 
residence with the earliest ancestors of the human race. 



CONCERNING BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS 

The discoveries of the Portuguese and the Spaniards had 
brought the Christians of western Europe into close contact 
with the people of India and of China. They knew of course 
that Christianity was not the only religion on this earth. There 
were the Mohammedans and the heathenish tribes of northern 
Africa who worshipped sticks and stones and dead trees. But 
in India and in China the Christian conquerors found new 
millions who had never heard of Christ and who did not want 
to hear of Him, because they thought their own religion, which 
was thousands of years old, much better than that of the West. 
As this is a story of mankind and not an exclusive history of 
the people of Europe and our western hemisphere, you ought 
to know something of two men whose teaching and whose 
example continue to influence the actions and the thoughts 
of the majority of our fellow-travellers on this earth. 

In India, Buddha was recognised as the great religious 
teacher. His history is an interesting one. He was born in 
the Sixth Century before the birth of Christ, within sight of the 
mighty Himalaya Mountains, where four hundred years before 
Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), the first of the great leaders of 
the Aryan race (the name which the Eastern branch of the 
Indo-European race had given to itself), had taught his peo- 
ple to regard life as a continuous struggle between Ahriman, 
and Ormuzd, the Gods of Evil and Good. Buddha's 

241 



242 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

father was Suddhodana, a mighty chief among the tribe of the 
Sakiyas. His mother, Maha Maya, was the daughter of a 
neighbouring king. She had been married when she was a very 
young girl. But many moons had passed beyond the distant 
ridge of hills and still her husband was without an heir who 
should rule his lands after him. At last, when she was fifty 
years old, her day came and she went forth that she might be 
among her own people when her baby should come into this 
world. 

It was a long trip to the land of the Koliyans, where Maha 
Maya had spent her earliest years. One night she was resting 
among the cool trees of the garden of Lumbini. There her son 
was born. He was given the name of Siddhartha, but we know 
him as Buddha, which means the Enlightened One. 

In due time, Siddhartha grew up to be a handsome young 
prince and when he was nineteen years old, he was married to 
his cousin Yasodhara. During the next ten years he lived 
far away from all pain and all suffering, behind the protecting 
walls of the royal palace, awaiting the day when he should 
succeed his father as King of the Sakiyas. 

But it happened that when he was thirty years old, he drove 
outside of the palace gates and saw a man who was old and 
worn out with labour and whose weak limbs could hardly carry 
the burden of life. Siddhartha pointed him out to his coach- 
man, Channa, but Channa answered that there were lots of 
poor people in this world and that one more or less did not 
matter. The young prince was very sad but he did not say 
anything and went back to live with his wife and his father 
and his mother and tried to be happy. A little while later he 
left the palace a second time. His carriage met a man who 
suffered from a terrible disease. Siddhartha asked Channa 
what had been the cause of this man's suffering, but the coach- 
man answered that there were many sick people in this world 
and that such things could not be helped and did not matter 
very much. The young prince was very sad when he heard this 
but again he returned to his people. 

A few weeks passed. One evening Siddhartha ordered his 



BLTDDHA AND CONFUCIUS 



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PS 

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244 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

carriage in order to go to the river and bathe. Suddenly his 
horses were frightened by the sight of a dead man whose rot- 
ting body lay sprawling in the ditch beside the road. The young 
prince, who had never been allowed to see such things, was 
frightened, but Channa told him not to mind such trifles. The 
world was full of dead people. It was the rule of life that all 
things must come to an end. Nothing was eternal. The grave 
awaited us all and there was no escape. 

That evening, when Siddliartha returned to his home, he 
was received with music. While he was away his wife had 
given birth to a son. The people were delighted because now 
they knew that there was an heir to the throne and they cele- 
brated the event by the beating of many drums. Siddhartha, 
however, did not share their joy. The curtain of life had been 
lifted and he had learned the horror of man's existence. The 
sight of death and suffering followed him like a terrible dream. 

That night the moon was shining brightly. Siddhartha 
woke up and began to think of many things. Never again 
could he be happy until he should have found a solution to the 
riddle of existence. He decided to find it far away from all 
those whom he loved. Softly he went into the room where 
Yasodhara was sleeping with her baby. Then he called for 
his faithful Channa and told him to follow. 

Together the two men went into the darkness of the night, 
one to find rest for his soul, the other to be a faithful servant 
unto a beloved master. 

The people of India among whom Siddhartha wandered for 
many years were just then in a state of change. Their ances- 
tors, the native Indians, had been conquered without great diffi- 
culty by the war-like Aryans (our distant cousins) and there- 
after the Aryans had been the rulers and masters of tens of 
millions of docile little brown men. To maintain themselves in 
the seat of the mighty, they had divided the population into 
different classes and gradually a system of "caste" of the most 
rigid sort had been enforced upon the natives. The descend- 
ants of the Indo-European conquerors belonged to the highest 
"caste," the class of warriors and nobles. Next came the caste 



BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS 245 

of the priests. Below these followed the peasants and the busi- 
ness men. The ancient natives, however, who were called 
Pariahs, formed a class of despised and miserable slaves and 
never could hope to be anything else. 

Even the religion of the people was a matter of caste. The 
old Indo-Europeans, during their thousands of years of wan- 
dering, had met with many strange adventures. These had 
been collected in a book called the Veda. The language of 
this book was called Sanskrit, and it was closely related to the 
different languages of the European continent, to Greek and 
Latin and Russian and German and two-score others. The 
three highest castes were allowed to read these holy scriptures. 
The Pariah, however, the despised member of the lowest caste, 
was not permitted to know its contents. Woe to the man of 
noble or priestly caste who should teach a Pariah to study the 
sacred volume! 

The majority of the Indian people, therefore, lived in 
misery. Since this planet offered them very little joy, salva- 
tion from suffering must be found elsewhere. They tried to 
derive a little consolation from meditation upon the bliss of 
their future existence. 

Brahma, the all-creator who was regarded by the Indian 
people as the supreme ruler of life and death, was worshipped 
as the highest ideal of perfection. To become like Brahma, to 
lose all desires for riches and power, was recognised as the most 
exalted purpose of existence. Holy thoughts were regarded 
as more important than holy deeds, and many people went 
into the desert and lived upon the leaves of trees and starved 
their bodies that they might feed their souls with the glorious 
contemplation of the splendours of Brahma, the Wise, the 
Good and the Merciful. 

Siddhartha, who had often observed these solitary wan- 
derers who were seeking the truth far away from the turmoil 
of the cities and the villages, decided to follow their example. 
He cut his hair. He took his pearls and his rubies and sent 
them back to his family with a message of farewell, which the 



246 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

ever faithful Channa carried. Without a single follower, the 
young prince then moved into the wilderness. 

Soon the fame of his holy conduct spread among the moun- 
tains. Five young men came to him and asked that they might 
be allowed to listen to his words of wisdom. He agreed to be 
their master if they would follow him. They consented, and 
he took them into the hills and for six years he taught them 
all he knew amidst the lonely peaks of the Vindhya Mountains. 
But at the end of this period of study, he felt that he was still 
far from perfection. The world that he had left continued to 
tempt him. He now asked that his pupils leave him and then 
he fasted for forty-nine days and nights, sitting upon the roots 
of an old tree. At last he received his reward. In the dusk of 
the fiftieth evening, Brahma revealed himself to his faithful 
servant. From that moment on, Siddhartha was called Buddha 
and he was revered as the Enlightened One who had come to 
save men from their unhappy mortal fate. 

The last forty-five years of his life, Buddha spent within 
the valley of the Ganges River, teaching his simple lesson of 
submission and meekness unto all men. In the year 488 before 
our era, he died, full of years and beloved by millions of people. 
He had not preached his doctrines for the benefit of a single 
class. Even the lowest Pariah might call himself his disciple. 

This, however, did not please the nobles and the priests and 
the merchants who did their best to destroy a creed which rec- 
ognised the equality of all living creatures and offered men the 
hope of a second life (a reincarnation) under happier circum- 
stances. As soon as they could, they encouraged the people of 
India to return to the ancient doctrines of the Brahmin creed 
with its fasting and its tortures of the sinful body. But 
Buddhism could not be destroyed. Slowly the disciples of the 
Enlightened One wandered across the valleys of the Hima- 
layas, and moved into China. They crossed the Yellow Sea 
and preached the wisdom of their master unto the people of 
Japan, and they faithfully obeyed the will of their great mas- 
ter, who had forbidden them to»use force. To-day more people 
recognise Buddha astHeir teacher than ever before and their 




BUDDHA GOES INTO THK MOINTAIXS 



BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS 247 

number surpasses that of the combined followers of Christ and 
Mohammed. 

As for Confucius, the wise old man of the Chinese, his 
story is a simple one. He was born in the year 550 b.c. He 
led a quiet, dignified and uneventful life at a time when China 
was without a strong central government and when the Chinese 
people were at the mercy of bandits and robber-barons who 
went from city to city, pillaging and stealing and murdering 
and turning the busy plains of northern and central China into 
a wilderness of starving people. 

Confucius, who loved his people, tried to save them. He 
did not have much faith in the use of violence. He was a very 
peaceful person. He did not think that he could make people 
over by giving them a lot of new laws. He knew that the only 
possible salvation would come from a change of heart, and he 
'set out upon the seemingly hopeless task of changing the char- 
acter of his millions of fellow men who inhabited the wide plains 
of eastern Asia. The Chinese had never been much interested 
in religion as we understand that word. They believed in 
devils and spooks as most primitive people do. But they had 
no prophets and recognised no "revealed truth." Confucius 
is almost the only one among the great moral leaders who did 
not see visions, who did not proclaim himself as the messenger 
of a divine power ; who did not, at some time or another, claim 
that he was inspired by voices from above. 

He was just a very sensible and kindly man, rather given 
to lonely wanderings and melancholy tunes upon his faithful 
flute. He asked for no recognition. He did not demand that 
any one should follow him or worship him. He reminds us 
of the ancient Greek philosophers, especially those of the Stoic 
School, men who believed in right living and righteous think- 
ing without the hope of a reward but simply for the peace of 
the soul that comes with a good conscience. 

Confucius was a very tolerant man. He went out of his 
way to visit Lao-^se, the other great Chinese leader and the 
founder~of a philosophic system called "Taoism," which was 
merely an early Chinese version of the Golden Rule. 



S48 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Confucius bore no hatred to any one. He taught the virtue 
of supreme self-possession. A person of real worth, according 
to the teaching of Confucius, did not allow himself to be 
ruffled by anger and suffered whatever fate brought him with 
the resignation of those sages who understand that everything 
which happens, in one way or another, is meant for the best. 

At first he had only a few students. Gradually the number 
increased. Before his death, in the year 478 B.C., several of the 
kings and the princes of China confessed themselves his disci- 
ples. When Christ was born in Bethlehem, the philosophy of 
Confucius had already become a part of the mental make-up 
of most Chinamen. It has continued to influence their lives 
ever since. Not however in its pure, original form. Most reh- 
gions change as time goes on. Christ preached humility and 
meekness and absence from worldly ambitions, but fifteen 
centuries after Golgotha, the head of the Christian church was 
spending millions upon the erection of a building that bore 
little relation to the lonely stable of Bethlehem. 

Lao-Tse taught the Golden Rule, and in less than three 
centuries the ignorant masses had made him into a real and 
very cruel God and had buried his wise commandments under 
a rubbish-heap of superstition which made the lives of the aver- 
age Chinese one long series of frights and fears and horrors. 

Confucius had shown his students the beauties of honouring 
their Father and their Mother. They soon began to be more 
interested in the memory of their departed parents than in the 
happiness of their children and their grandchildren. Delib- 
erately they turned their backs upon the future and tried to 
peer into the vast darkness of the past. The worship of the 
ancestors became a positive religious system. Rather than 
disturb a cemetery situated upon the sunny and fertile side of 
a mountain, they would plant their rice and wheat upon the 
barren rocks of the other slope where nothing could possibly 
grow. And they preferred hunger and famine to the desecra- 
tion of the ancestral grave. 

At the same time the wise words of Confucius never quite 
lost their hold upon the increasing millions of eastern Asia. 



BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS 



24!9 




I A Ra 3 fji^A/ J>£j£Ji'r 



THE GREAT MORAL LEADERS 



250 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Confucianism, with its profound sayings and shrewd observa- 
tions, added a touch of common-sense philosophy to the soul of 
every Chinaman and influenced his entire life, whether he was 
a simple laundryman in a steaming basement or the ruler of 
vast provinces who dwelt behind the high walls of a secluded 
palace. 

In the sixteenth century the enthusiastic but rather uncivi- 
lised Christians of the western world came face to face with 
the older creeds of the East. The early Spaniards and Portu- 
guese looked upon the peaceful statues of Buddha and con- 
templated the venerable pictures of Confucius and did not in 
the least know what to make of those worthy prophets with 
their far-away smile. They came to the easy conclusion that 
these strange divinities were just plain devils who represented 
something idolatrous and heretical and did not deserve the 
respect of the true sons of the Church. Whenever the spirit 
of Buddha or Confucius seemed to interfere with the trade in 
spices and silks, the Europeans attacked the "evil influence" 
with bullets and grape-shot. That system had certain very 
definite disadvantages. It has left us an unpleasant heritage 
of ill-will which promises little good for the immediate future. 



THE REFORMATION 



THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST 
COMPARED TO A GIGANTIC PENDULUM 
WHICH FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD AND 
BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFER- 
ENCE AND THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY 
ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE 
WERE FOLLOWED BY THE ARTISTIC AND 
LITERARY INDIFFERENCE AND THE RE- 
LIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM OF THE REFORMA- 
TION 

Of course you have heard of the Reformation. You think 
of a small but courageous group of pilgrims who crossed the 
ocean to have "freedom of religious worship." Vaguely in the 
course of time (and more especially in our Protestant coun- 
tries) the Reformation has come to stand for the idea of 
"hberty of thought." Martin Luther is represented as the 
leader of the vanguard of progress. But when history is 
something more than a series of flattering speeches addressed 
to our own glorious ancestors, when to use the words of the 
German historian Ranke, we try to discover what "actually 
happened," then much of the past is seen in a very different 
light. 

Few things in human life are either entirely good or entirely 
bad. Few things are either black or white. It is the duty of 

251 



252 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

the honest chronicler to give a true account of all the good and 
bad sides of every historical event. It is very difficult to do 
this because we all have our personal likes and dislikes. But 
we ought to try and be as fair as M'e can be, and must not allow 
our prejudices to influence us too much. 

Take my own case as an example. I grew up in the very 
Protestant centre of a very Protestant country. I never saw 
any Catholics until I was about twelve years old. Then I felt 
very uncomfortable when I met them. I was a little bit afraid. 
I knew the story of the many thousand people who had been 
burned and hanged and quartered by the Spanish Inquisition 
when the Duke of Alba tried to cure the Dutch people of their 
Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies. All that was very real 
to me. It seemed to have happened only the day before. It 
might occur again. There might be another Saint Bartholo- 
mew's night, and poor little me would be slaughtered in my 
nightie and my body would be thrown out of the window, as 
had happened to the noble Admiral de Coligny. 

Much later I went to live for a number of years in a Cath- 
olic country. I found the people much pleasanter and much 
more tolerant and quite as intelligent as my former country- 
men. To my great surprise, I began to discover that there 
was a Catholic side to the Reformation, quite as much as a 
Protestant. 

Of course the good people of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, who actually lived through the Reformation, did 
not see things that way. They were always right and their 
enemy was always wrong. It was a question of hang or be 
hanged, and both sides preferred to do the hanging. Which 
was no more than human and for which they deserve no blame. 

When we look at the world as it appeared in the year 1500, 
an easy date to remember, and the year in which the Emperor 
Charles V was born, this is what we see. The feudal disorder 
of the Middle Ages has given way before the order of a num- 
ber of highly centralised kingdoms. The most powerful of 
all sovereigns is the great Charles, then a baby in a cradle. 
He is the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella and of Maxi- 



THE REFORMATION 253 

milian of Habsburg, the last of the mediaeval knights, and of 
his wife Mary, the daughter of Charles the Bold, the ambitious 
Burgundian duke who had made successful war upon France, 
but had been killed by the independent Swiss peasants. The 
child Charles, therefore, has fallen heir to the greater part of 
the map, to all the lands of his parents, grandparents, uncles, 
cousins and aunts in Germany, in Austria, in Holland, in 
Belgium, in Italy, and in Spain, together with all their colonies 
in Asia, Africa and America. By a strange irony of fate, he 
has been born in Ghent, in that same castle of the counts of 
Flanders, which the Germans used as a prison during their 
recent occupation of Belgium, and although a Spanish king 
and a German emperor, he receives the training of a Fleming. 

As his father is dead (poisoned, so people say, but this is 
never proved), and his mother has lost her mind (she is trav- 
elling through her domains with the coffin containing the body 
of her departed husband), the child is left to the strict disci- 
pline of his Aunt Margaret. Forced to rule Germans and 
Italians and Spaniards and a hundred strange races, Charles 
grows up a Fleming, a faithful son of the Catholic Church, 
but quite averse to religious intolerance. He is rather lazy, 
both as a boy and as a man. But fate condemns him to rule 
the world when the world is in a turmoil of religious fervour. 
Forever he is speeding from Madrid to Innsbruck and from 
Bruges to Vienna. He loves peace and quiet and he is always 
at war. At the age of fifty-five, we see him turn his back upon 
the human race in utter disgust at so much hate and so much 
stupidity. Three years later he dies, a very tired and disap- 
pointed man. 

So much for Charles the Emperor. How about the Church, 
the second great power in the world ? The Church has changed 
greatly since the early days of the Middle Ages, when it started 
out to conquer the heathen and show them the advantages of 
a pious and righteous life. In the first place, the Church has 
grown too rich. The Pope is no longer the shepherd of a flock 
of humble Christians. He lives in a vast palace and surrounds 
himself with artists and musicians and famous literary men. 



254 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

His churches and chapels are covered with new pictures in 
which the saints look more like Greek Gods than is strictly 
necessary. He divides his time unevenly between affairs of 
state and art. The affairs of state take ten percent of his time. 
The other ninety percent goes to an active interest in Roman 
statues, recently discovered Greek vases, plans for a new sum- 
mer home, the rehearsal of a new play. The Archbishops and 
the Cardinals follow the example of their Pope. The Bishops 
try to imitate the Archbishops. The village priests, however, 
have remained faithful to their duties. They keep themselves 
aloof from the wicked world and the heathenish love of beautj^ 
and pleasure. They stay away from the monasteries where 
the monks seem to have forgotten their ancient vows of sim- 
plicity and poverty and live as happily as they dare without 
causing too much of a public scandal. 

Finally, there are the common people. They are much 
better off than they have ever been before. They are more 
prosperous, they live in better houses, their children go to bet- 
ter schools, their cities are more beautiful than before, their 
firearms have made them the equal of their old enemies, the 
robber-barons, who for centuries have levied such heavy taxes 
upon their trade. So much for the chief actors in the 
Reformation. 

Now let us see what the Renaissance has done to Europe, 
and then you will understand how the revival of learning and 
art was bound to be followed by a revival of religious inter- 
ests. The Renaissance began in Italy. From there it spread 
to France. It was not quite successful in Spain, where 
five hundred years of warfare with the Moors had made the 
people very narrow minded and very fanatical in all religious 
matters. The circle had grown wider and wider, but once the 
Alps had been crossed, the Renaissance had suffered a change. 

The people of northern Europe, living in a very different 
chmate, had an outlook upon life which contrasted strangely 
with that of their southern neighbours. The Italians lived out 
in the open, under a sunny sky. It was easy for them to laugh 
and to sing and to be happy. The Germans, the Dutch, the 



THE REFORMATION 255 

English, the Swedes, spent most of their time indoors, listen- 
ing to the rain beating on the closed windows of their com- 
fortable little houses. They did not laugh quite so much. They 
took everything more seriously. They were forever conscious 
of their immortal souls and they did not like to be funny about 
matters which they considered holy and sacred. The "human- 
istic" part of the Renaissance, the books, the studies of ancient 
authors, the grammar and the text-books, interested them 
greatly. But the general return to the old pagan civilisation 
of Greece and Rome, which was one of the chief results of the 
Renaissance in Italy, filled their hearts with horror. 

But the Papacy and the College of Cardinals was almost 
entirely composed of Italians and they had turned the Church 
into a pleasant club where people discussed art and music and 
the theatre, but rarely mentioned religion. Hence the split 
between the serious north and the more civilised but easy-going 
and indifferent south was growing wider and wider all the 
time and nobody seemed to be aware of the danger that threat- 
ened the Church. 

There were a few minor reasons which will explain why the 
Reformation took place in Germany rather than in Sweden 
or England. The Germans bore an ancient grudge against 
Rome. The endless quarrels between Emperor and Pope had 
caused much mutual bitterness. In the other European coun- 
tries where the government rested in the hands of a strong 
king, the ruler had often been able to protect his subjects 
against the greed of the priests. In Germany, where a shadowy 
emperor ruled a turbulent crowd of little princelings, the good 
burghers were more directly at the mercy of their bishops and 
prelates. These dignitaries were trying to collect large sums 
of money for the benefit of those enormous churches which 
were a hobby of the Popes of the Renaissance. The Germans 
felt that they were being mulcted and quite naturally they did 
not like it. 

And then there is the rarely mentioned fact that Germany 
was the home of the printing press. In northern Europe books 
were cheap and the Bible was no longer a mysterious manu- 



256 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

script owned and explained by the priest. It was a household 
book of many families where Latin was understood by the 
father and by the children. Whole famihes began to read it, 
which was against the law of the Church. They discovered that 
the priests were telling them many things which, according to 
the original text of the Holy Scriptures, were somewhat differ- 
ent. This caused doubt. People began to ask questions. And 
questions, when they cannot be answered, often cause a great 
deal of trouble. 

The attack began when the humanists of the North opened 
fire upon the monks. In their heart of hearts they still had 
too much respect and reverence for the Pope to direct their 
sallies against his Most Holy Person. But the lazy, ignorant 
monks, living behind the sheltering walls of their rich monas- 
teries, offered rare sport. 

The leader in this warfare, curiously enough, was a very 
faithful son of the church. Gerard Gerardzoon, or Desiderius 
Erasmus, as he is usually called, was a poor boy, born in 
Rotterdam in Holland, and educated at the same Latin school 
of Deventer from which Thomas a Kempis had graduated. 
He had become a priest and for a time he had lived in a monas- 
tery. He had travelled a great deal and knew whereof he wrote. 
When he began his career as a public pamphleteer (he would 
have been called an editorial writer in our day) the world was 
greatly amused at an anonymous series of letters which had 
just appeared under the title of "Letters of Obscure Men." 
In these letters, the general stupidity and arrogance of the 
monks of the late Middle Ages was exposed in a strange 
German-Latin doggerel which reminds one of our modern 
limericks. Erasmus himself was a very learned and serious 
scholar, who knew both Latin and Greek and gave us the first 
reliable version of the New Testament, which he translated 
into Latin together with a corrected edition of the original 
Greek text. But he believed with Sallust, the Roman poet, 
that nothing prevents us from "stating the truth with a smile 
upon our lips." 

In the year 1500, while visiting Sir Thomas More in Eng- 



THE REFORMATION 



257 



land, he took a few weeks off and wrote a funny little book, 
called the "Praise of Folly," in which he attacked the monks 
and their credulous followers with that most dangerous of all 
weapons, humor. The booklet was the best seller of the six- 
teenth century. It was translated into almost every language 
and it made people pay attention to those other books of 
Erasmus in which he advocated reform of the many abuses of 
the church and appealed to his fellow humanists to help him 
in his task of bringing about a great rebirth of the Christian 
faith. 

But nothing came of these 
excellent plans. Erasmus was 
too reasonable and too tolerant 
to please most of the enemies 
of the church. They were wait- 
ing for a leader of a more 
robust nature. 

He came, and his name was 
Martin Luther. 

Luther was a North-Ger- 
man peasant with a first-class 
brain and possessed of great 
personal courage. He was a 
university man, a master of arts 
of the University of Erfurt; 
afterwards he joined a Domin- 
ican monastery. Then he became a college professor at the 
theological school of Wittenberg and began to explain the 
scriptures to the indifferent ploughboys of his Saxon home. He 
had a lot of spare time and this he used to study the original 
texts of the Old and New Testaments. Soon he began to see 
the great difference which existed between the words of Christ 
and those that were preached by the Popes and the Bishops. 

In the year 1511, he visited Rome on official business. 
Alexander VI, of the family of Borgia, who had enriched him- 
self for the benefit of his son and daughter, was dead. But his 




LUTHER TRANSLATES 
THE BIBLE 



258 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

successor, Julius II, a man of irreproachable personal char- 
acter, was spending most of his time fighting and building and 
did not impress this serious minded German theologian with 
his piety. Luther returned to Wittenberg a much disappointed 
man. But worse was to follow. 

The gigantic church of St. Peter which Pope Julius had 
wished upon his innocent successors, although only half begun, 
was already in need of repair. Alexander VI had spent every 
penny of the Papal treasury. Leo X, who succeeded Julius 
in the year 1513, was on the verge of bankruptcy. He reverted 
to an old method of raising ready cash. He began to sell 
"indulgences." An indulgence was a piece of parchment which 
in return for a certain sum of money, promised a sinner a de- 
crease of the time which he would have to spend in purgatory. 
It was a perfectly correct thing according to the creed of the 
late Middle Ages. Since the church had the power to forgive 
the sins of those who truly repented before they died, the 
church also had the right to shorten, through its intercession 
with the Saints, the time during which the soul must be puri- 
fied in the shadowy realms of Purgatory. 

It was unfortunate that these Indulgences must be sold for 
money. But they offered an easy form of revenue and besides, 
those who were too poor to pay, received theirs for nothing. 

Now it happened in the year 1517 that the exclusive terri- 
tory for the sale of indulgences in Saxony was given to a 
Dominican monk by the name of Johan Tetzel. Brother 
Johan was a hustling salesman. To tell the truth he was a 
little too eager. His business methods outraged the pious 
people of the little duchy. And Luther, who was an honest 
fellow, got so angry that he did a rash thing. On the 31st of 
October of the year 1517, he went to the court church and upon 
the doors thereof he posted a sheet of paper with ninety-five 
statements, (or theses), attacking the sale of indulgences. 
;These statements had been written in Latin. Luther had no 
intention of starting a riot. He was not a revolutionist. He 
objected to the institution of the Indulgences and he wanted his 
< fellow professors to know what he thought about them. But 



THE REFORMATION 259 

this was still a private affair of the clerical and professorial 
world and there was no appeal to the prejudices of the com- 
munity of laymen. 

Unfortunately, at that moment when the whole world had 
begun to take an interest in the religious affairs of the day, 
it was utterly impossible to discuss anything, without at once 
creating a serious mental disturbance. In less than two 
months, all Europe was discussing the ninety-five theses of 
the Saxon monk. Every one must take sides. Every obscure 
little theologian must print his own opinion. The papal au- 
Hiorities began to be alarmed. They ordered the Wittenberg 
professor to proceed to Rome and give an account of his action. 
Luther wisely remembered what had happened to Huss. He 
stayed in Germany and he was punished with excommunica- 
tion. Luther burned the papal bull in the presence of an 
admiring multitude and from that moment, peace between him- 
self and the Pope was no longer possible. 

Without any desire on his part, Luther had become the 
leader of a vast army of discontented Christians. German 
patriots like Ulrich von Hutten, rushed to his defence. The 
students of Wittenberg and Erfurt and Leipzig offered to 
defend him should the authorities try to imprison him. The 
Elector of Saxony reassured the eager young men. No harm 
would befall Luther as long as he stayed on Saxon ground. 

All this happened in the year 1520. Charles V was twenty 
years old and as the ruler of half the world, was forced to 
remain on pleasant terms with the Pope. He sent out calls 
for a Diet or general assembly in the good city of Worms on 
the Rhine and commanded Luther to be present and give an 
account of his extraordinary behaviour. Luther, who now 
was the national hero of the Germans, went. He refused to 
take back a single word of what he had ever written or said. 
His conscience was controlled only by the word of God. He 
would live and die for his conscience. 

The Diet of Worms, after due deliberation, declared 
Luther an outlaw before God and man, and forbade all Ger- 
mans to give him shelter or food or drink, or to read a single 



260 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

word of the books which the dastardly heretic had written. 
But the great reformer was in no danger. By the majority 
of the Germans of the north the edict was denounced as a most 
imjust and outrageous document. For gi-eater safety, Luther 
was hidden in the Wartburg, a castle belonging to the Elector 
of Saxony, and there he defied all papal authority by trans- 
lating the entire Bible into the German language, that all the 
people might read and know the word of God for themselves. 

By this time, the Reformation was no longer a spiritual 
and religious affair. Those who hated the beauty of the mod- 
ern church building used this period of unrest to attack and 
destroy what they did not like because they did not understand 
it. Impoverished knights tried to make up for past losses by 
grabbing the territory which belonged to the monasteries. 
Discontented princes made use of the absence of the Emperor 
to increase their own power. The starving peasants, follow- 
ing the leadership of half-crazy agitators, made the best of 
the opportunity and attacked the castles of their masters and 
plundered and murdered and burned with the zeal of the old 
Crusaders. 

A veritable reign of disorder broke loose throughout the 
Empire. Some princes became Protestants (as the "protest- 
ing" adherents of Luther were called) and persecuted their 
Catholic subjects. Others remained Catholic and hanged their 
Protestant subjects. The Diet of Speyer of the year 1526 
tried to settle this difficult question of allegiance by ordering 
that "the subjects should all be of the same religious denomi- 
nation as their princes." This turned Germany into a checker- 
board of a thousand hostile little duchies and principalities and 
created a situation which prevented the normal political 
growth for hundreds of years. 

In February of the year 1546 Luther died and was put 
to rest in the same church where twenty-nine years before he 
had proclaimed his famous objections to the sale of Indul- 
gences. In less than thirty years, the indifferent, joking and 
laughing world of the Renaissance had been transformed into 
the arguing, quarrelhng, back-biting, debating-society of the 



THE REFORMATION 261 

Reformation. The universal spiritual empire of the Popes 
came to a sudden end and the whole of western Europe was 
turned into a battle-field, where Protestants and Catholics 
killed each other for the greater glory of certain theological 
doctrines which are as incomprehensible to the present genera- 
tion as the mysterious inscriptions of the ancient Etruscans. 




THE AGE OF THE GREAT RELIGIOUS 
CONTROVERSIES 

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the age of 
religious controversy. 

If you will notice you will find that almost everybody 
around you is forever "talking economics" and discussing 
wages and hours of labor and strikes in their relation to the 
life of the community, for that is the main topic of interest 
of our own time. 

The poor little children of the year 1600 or 1650 fared 
worse. They never heard anything but "religion." Their 
heads were filled with "predestination," "transubstanti- 
tion," "free will," and a hundred other queer words, express- 
ing obscure points of "the true faith," whether Catholic or 
Protestant. According to the desire of their parents they were 
baptised Catholics or Lutherans or Calvinists or Zwinglians 
or Anabaptists. They learned their theology from the Augs- 
burg catechism, composed by Luther, or from the "institutes 
of Christianity," written by Calvin, or they mumbled the 
Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith which were printed in the Eng- 
lish Book of Common Prayer, and they were told that these 
alone represented the "True Faith." 

They heard of the wholesale theft of church property per- 
petrated by King Henry VIII, the much-married monarch of 
England, who made himself the supreme head of the English 

262 



RELIGIOUS WARFARE 



263 



church, and assumed the old papal rights of appointing bish- 
ops and priests. They had a nightmare whenever some one 
mentioned the Holy Inquisition, with its dungeons and its 
many torture chambers, and they were treated to equally hor- 
rible stories of how a mob of outraged Dutch Protestants had 
got hold of a dozen defenceless old priests and hanged them 
for the sheer pleasure of _^__. 
killing those who professed ^^^^ 
a different faith. It was ^- 
unfortunate that the two 
contending parties were so 
equally matched. Other- 
wise the struggle would 
have come to a quick solu- 
tion. Now it dragged on 
for eight generations, and 
it grew so complicated that 
I can only tell you the most 
important details, and 
must ask you to get the 
rest from one of the many 
histories of the Reforma- 
tion. 

The great reform move- 
ment of the Protestants 
had been followed by a 
thoroughgoing reform 
within the bosom of the 
Church. Those popes who 
had been merely amateur humanists and dealers in Roman and 
Greek antiquities, disappeared from the scene and their place 
was taken by serious men who spent twenty hours a day ad- 
ministering those holy duties which had been placed in their 
hands. 

The long and rather disgraceful happiness of the monas- 
teries came to an end. Monks and nuns were forced to be up 
at sunrise, to study the Church Fathers, to tend the sick and 




THE INQUISITION 



264 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

console the dying. The Holy Inquisition watched day and 
night that no dangerous doctrines should be spread by way of 
the printing press. Here it is customary to mention poor 
Galileo, who was locked up because he had been a little too 
indiscreet in explaining the heavens with his funny little tele- 
scope and had muttered certain opinions about the behaviour 
of the planets which were entirely opposed to the official views 
of the church. But in all fairness to the Pope, the clergy and 
the Inquisition, it ought to be stated that the Protestants were 
quite as much the enemies of science and medicine as the Cath- 
olics and with equal manifestations of ignorance and intoler- 
ance regarded the men who investigated things for themselves 
as the most dangerous enemies of mankind. 

And Calvin, the great French reformer and the tyrant 
(both political and spiritual) of Geneva, not only assisted the 
French authorities when they tried to hang Michael Servetus 
(the Spanish theologian and physician who had become famous 
as the assistant of Vesalius, the first gi'eat anatomist), but 
when Servetus had managed to escape from his French jail and 
had fled to Geneva, Calvin threw this brilliant man into prison 
and after a prolonged trial, allowed him to be burned at the 
stake on account of his heresies, totally indifferent to his fame 
as a scientist. 

And so it went. We have few reliable statistics upon the 
subject, but on the whole, the Protestants tired of this game 
long before the Catholics, and the greater part of honest men 
and women who were burned and hanged and decapitated on 
account of their religious beliefs fell as victims of the very ener- 
getic but also very drastic church of Rome. 

For tolerance (and please remember this when you grow 
older) , is of very recent origin and even the people of our own 
so-called "modern world" are apt to be tolerant only upon such 
matters as do not interest them very much. They are tolerant 
towards a native of Africa, and do not care whether he becomes 
a Buddhist or a Mohammedan, because neither Buddhism nor 
Mohammedanism means anything to them. But when they 
hear that their neighbour who was a Republican and believed 



RELIGIOUS WARFARE 265 

in a high protective tariff, has joined the Socialist party and 
now wants to repeal all tariff laws, their tolerance ceases and 
they use almost the same words as those employed by a kindly 
Catholic (or Protestant) of the seventeenth century, who was 
informed that his best friend whom he had always respected 
and loved had fallen a victim to the terrible heresies of the 
Protestant (or Catholic) church. 

"Heresy" until a very short time ago was regarded as a 
disease. Nowadays when we see a man neglecting the per- 
sonal cleanliness of his body and his home and exposing himself 
and his children to the dangers of typhoid fever or another 
preventable disease, we send for the board-of-health and the 
health officer calls upon the police to aid him in removing this 
person who is a danger to the safety of the entire community. 
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a heretic, a man 
or a woman who openly doubted the fundamental principles 
upon which his Protestant or Catholic religion had been 
founded, was considered a more terrible menace than a typhoid 
carrier. Typhoid fe^^-^r might (very likely would) destroy the 
body. But heresy, according to them, would positively destroy 
the immortal soul. It was therefore the duty of all good and 
logical citizens to warn the police against the enemies of the 
established order of things and those who failed to do so were 
as culpable as a modern man who does not telephone to the 
nearest doctor when he discovers that his fellow-tenants are 
suffering from cholera or small-pox. 

In the years to come you will hear a great deal about pre- 
ventive medicine. Preventive medicine simply means that our 
doctors do not wait until their patients are sick, then step for- 
ward and cure them. On the contrary, they study the patient 
and the conditions under which he lives when he (the patient) 
is perfectly well and they remove every possible cause of illness 
by cleaning up rubbish, by teaching him what to eat and what 
to avoid, and by giving him a few simple ideas of personal 
hygiene. They go even further than that, and these good 
doctors enter the schools and teach the children how to use 
tooth-brushes and how to avoid catching colds. 



266 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

The sixteenth century which regarded (as I have tried to 
show you) bodily illness as much less important than sickness 
which threatened the soul, organised a system of spiritual pre- 
ventive medicine. As soon as a child was old enough to spell 
his first words, he was educated in the true (and the"only 
true") principles of the Faith. Indirectly this proved to be a 
good thing for the general progress of the people of Europe. 
The Protestant lands were soon dotted with schools. They 
used a great deal of very valuable time to explain the Cate- 
chism, but they gave instruction in other things besides the- 
ology. They encouraged reading and they were responsible 
for the great prosperity of the printing trade. 

But the Catholics did not lag behind. They too devoted 
much time and thought to education. The Church, in this mat- 
ter, found an invaluable friend and ally in the newly-founded 
order of the Society of Jesus. The founder of this remarkable 
organisation was a Spanish soldier who after a life of unholy 
adventures had been converted and thereupon felt himself 
bound to serve the church just as many former sinners, who 
have been shown the errors of their way by the Salvation Army, 
devote the remaining years of their lives to the task of aiding 
and consoling those who are less fortunate. 

The name of this Spaniard was Ignatius de Loyola. He 
was born in the year before the discovery of America. He had 
been wounded and lamed for life and while he was in the hos- 
pital he had seen a vision of the Holy Virgin and her Son, who 
bade him give up the wickedness of his former life. He de- 
cided to go to the Holy Land and finish the task of the Cru- 
sades. But a visit to Jerusalem had shown him the impossi- 
bility of the task and he returned west to help in the warfare 
upon the heresies of the Lutherans. 

In the year 1534 he was studying in Paris at the Sorbonne. 
Together with seven other students he founded a fraternity. 
The eight men promised each other that they would lead holy 
lives, that they would not strive after riches but after righteous- 
ness, and would devote themselves, body and soul, to the serv- 
ice of the Church. A few years later this small fraternity 



RELIGIOUS WARFARE 267 

had grown into a regular organisation and was recognised by- 
Pope Paul III as the Society of Jesus. 

Loyola had been a military man. He believed in discipline, 
and absolute obedience to the orders of the superior dignitaries 
became one of the main causes for the enormous success of the 
Jesuits. They specialised in education. They gave their 
teachers a most thorough-going education before they allowed 
them to talk to a single pupil. They lived with their students 
and they entered into their games. They watched them with 
tender care. And as a result they raised a new generation of 
faithful Catholics who took their religious duties as seriously 
as the people of the early Middle Ages. 

The shrewd Jesuits, however, did not waste all their efforts 
upon the education of the poor. They entered the palaces 
of the mighty and became the private tutors of future emperors 
and kings. And what this meant you will see for yourself 
when I tell you about the Thirty Years War. But before 
this terrible and final outbreak of religious fanaticism, a great 
many other things had happened. 

Charles V was dead. Germany and Austria had been left 
to his brother Ferdinand. All his other possessions, Spain and 
the Netherlands and the Indies and America had gone to his 
son Philip. Philip was the son of Charles and a Portuguese 
princess who had been first cousin to her own husband. The 
children that are born of such a union are apt to be rather 
queer. The son of Philip, the unfortunate Don Carlos, (mur- 
dered afterwards with his own father's consent,) was crazy. 
Philip was not quite crazy, but his zeal for the Church bordered 
closely upon religious insanity. He believed that Heaven had 
appointed him as one of the saviours of mankind. Therefore, 
whosoever was obstinate and refused to share his Majesty's 
views, proclaimed himself an enemy of the human race and 
must be exterminated lest his example corrupt the souls of 
his pious neighbours. 

Spain, of course, was a very rich country. All the gold and 
silver of the new world flowed into the Castilian and Ara- 
gonian treasuries. But Spain suffered from a curious eco- 



268 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



nomic disease. Her peasants were hard working men and 
even harder working women. But the better classes main- 
tained a supreme contempt for any form of labour, outside of 
employment in the army or navy or the civil service. As for 
the Moors, who had been very industrious artisans, they had 
been driven out of the country long before. As a result, Spain, 
the treasure chest of the world, remained a poor country be- 
cause all her money had to be sent abroad in exchange for the 
wheat and the other necessities of life which the Spaniards 
neglected to raise for themselves. 

Philip, ruler of the most 
powerful nation of the six- 
teenth century, depended for 
his revenue upon the taxes 
which were gathered in the 
busy commercial bee-hive of 
the Netherlands. But these 
Flemings and Dutchmen were 
devoted followers of the doc- 
trines of Luther and Calvin 
and they had cleansed their 
churches of all images and holy 
paintings and they had in- 
formed the Pope that they no 
longer regarded him as their 
shepherd but intended to follow 
the dictates of their consciences and the commands of their 
newly translated Bible. 

This placed the king in a very difficult position. He could 
not possibly tolerate the heresies of his Dutch subjects, but 
he needed their money. If he allowed them to be Protestants 
and took no measures to save theii- souls he was deficient in 
his duty toward God. If he sent the Inquisition to the Neth- 
erlands and burned his subjects at the stake, he would lose the 
greater part of his income. 

Being a man of uncertain will-power he hesitated a long 
time. He tried kindness and sternness and promises and 




THE NIGHT OF 
ST. BARTHOLOMEW 



RELIGIOUS WARFARE 



269 



threats. The Hollanders remained obstinate, and continued to 
sing psalms and listen to the sermons of their Lutheran and 
Calvinist preachers. Philip in his despair sent his "man of 
iron," the Duke of Alba, to bring these hardened sinners to 
terms. Alba began by decapitating those leaders who had not 
wisely left the country before his arrival. In the year 1572, 
(the same year that the French Protestant leaders were all 
killed during the terrible night of Saint Bartholomew), he 




LEYDEN DELIVERED BY THE CUTTING OF THE DYKES 



attacked a number of Dutch cities and massacred the inhabit- 
ants as an example for the others. The next year he laid siege 
to the town of Leyden, the manufacturing center of Holland. 
Meanwhile, the seven small provinces of the northern 
Netherlands had formed a defensive union, the so-called union 
of Utrecht, and had recognised William of Orange, a German 
prince who had been the private secretary of the Emperor 
Charles V, as the leader of their army and as commander of 



270 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



their freebooting sailors, who were known as the Beggars of 
the Sea. William, to save Leyden, cut the dykes, created a 
shallow inland sea, and delivered the town with the help of a 
strangely equipped navy consisting of scows and flat-bottomed 
barges which were rowed and pushed and pulled through the 
mud until they reached the city walls. 

It was the first time that an army of the invincible Spanish 
king had sufl'ered such a humiliating defeat. It surprised the 
world just as the Japanese victory of Mukden, in the Russian- 
Japanese war, surprised our own generation. The Protestant 
powers took fresh courage and 
Philip devised new means for 
the purpose of conquering his 
rebellious subjects. He hired 
a poor half-witted fanatic to 
go and murder William of 
Orange. But the sight of their 
dead leader did not bring the 
Seven Provinces to their knees. 
On the contrary it made them 
furiously angry. In the year 
1581, the Estates General (the 
meeting of the representatives 
of the Seven Provinces) came 
together at the Hague and 
most solemnly abjured their 
"wicked king Philip" and them- 
selves assumed the burden of sovereignty which thus far had 
been invested in their "King by the Grace of God." 

This is a very important event in the history of the great 
struggle for political liberty. It was a step which reached 
much further than the uprising of the nobles which ended with 
the signing of the Magna Carta. These good burghers said 
"Between a king and his subjects there is a silent understand- 
ing that both sides shall perform certain services and shall 
recognise certain definite duties. If either party fails to live 
up to this contract, the other has the right to consider it ter- 




THE MURDER OF WILLIAM 
THE SILENT 



RELIGIOUS WARFARE 



271 



minated." The American subjects of King George III in 
the year 1776 came to a similar conclusion. But they had three 
thousand miles of ocean between themselves and their ruler 
and the Estates General took their decision (which meant a 
slow death in case of defeat) within hearing of the Spanish 
guns and although in constant fear of an avenging Spanish 
fleet. 

The stories about a mysterious Spanish fleet that was to con- 
quer both Holland and England, when Protestant Queen 
Elizabeth had succeeded Catholic "Bloody Mary" was an old 
one. For years the sailors of 
the waterfront had talked 
about it. In the eighties of 
the sixteenth century, the 
rumour took a definite shape. 
According to pilots who had 
been in Lisbon, all the Spanish 
and Portuguese wharves were 
building ships. And in the 
southern Netherlands (in Bel- 
gium) the Duke of Parma was 
collecting a large expedition- 
ary force to be carried from 
Ostend to London and Am- 
sterdam as soon as the fleet 
should arrive. 

In the year 1586 the Great Armada set sail for the north. 
But the harbours of the Flemish coast were blockaded by a 
Dutch fleet and the Channel was guarded by the English, and 
the Spaniards, accustomed to the quieter seas of the south, did 
not know how to navigate in this squally and bleak northern 
climate. What happened to the Armada once it was attacked 
by ships and by storms I need not tell you. A few ships, by 
saihng around Ireland, escaped to tell the terrible story of 
defeat. The others perished and lie at the bottom of the North 
Sea. 

Turn about is fair play. The British and the Dutch Prot- 




THE ARMADA IS COMING 



272 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

estants now carried the war into the territory of the enemy. 
Before the end of the century, Houtman, with the help of a 
booklet written by Linschoten (a Hollander who had been in 
the Portuguese service), had at last discovered the route to 
the Indies. As a result the great Dutch East India Company 
was founded and a systematic war upon the Portuguese and 
Spanish colonies in Asia and Africa was begun in all serious- 
ness. 

It was during this early era of colonial conquest that a 
curious lawsuit was fought out in the Dutch courts. Early in 
the seventeenth century a Dutch Captain by the name of van 
Heemskerk, a man who had made himself famous as the head 
of an expedition which had tried to discover the North Eastern 
Passage to the Indies and who had spent a winter on the frozen 
shores of the island of Nova Zembla, had captured a Portu- 
guese ship in the straits of Malacca. You will remember that 
the Pope had divided the world into two equal shares, one of 
which had been given to the Spaniards and the other to the 
Portuguese. The Portuguese quite naturally regarded the 
water which surrounded their Indian islands as part of their 
own property and since, for the moment, they were not at war 
with the United Seven Netherlands, they claimed that the 
captain of a private Dutch trading company had no right to 
enter their private domain and steal their ships. And they 
brought suit. The directors of the Dutch East India Company 
hired a bright young lawyer, by the name of De Groot or 
Grotius, to defend their case. He made the astonishing plea 
that the ocean is free to all comers. Once outside the distance 
which a cannon ball fired from the land can reach, the sea is 
or (according to Grotius) ought to be, a free and open highway 
to all the ships of all nations. It was the first time that this 
startling doctrine had been publicly pronounced in a court 
of law. It was opposed by all the other seafaring people. To 
counteract the eflPect of Grotius' famous plea for the "Mare 
Liberum," or "Open Sea," John Selden, the Englishman, 
wrote his famous treatise upon the "Mare Clausum" or "Closed 
Sea" which treated of the natural right of a sovereign to regard 



RELIGIOUS WARFARE 273 

the seas which surrounded his country as belonging to his terri- 
tory. I mention this here because the question had not yet 
been decided and during the last war caused all sorts of diffi- 
culties and complications. 

To return to the warfare between Spaniard and Hollander 
and Englishman, before twenty years were over the most 
valuable colonies of the Indies and the Cape of Good Hope and 
Ceylon and those along the coast of China and even Japan were 
in Protestant hands. In 1621 a West Indian Company was 
founded which conquered Brazil and in North America built 

■■''-'■fifc!'^-iii^^^'"-'' •^''^ •'■ '•*'■■■> ■Vr'"^-'"''--'^ ^^^■■•'^■';•-^^ 



■•":'''.^-; 







*^^*k« ■A.i'i '^' v n^tmi^ 






THE DEATH OF HUDSON 

a fortress called Nieuw Amsterdam at the mouth of the river 
which Henry Hudson had discovered in the year 1609. 

These new colonies enriched both England and the Dutch 
Republic to such an extent that they could hire foreign sol- 
diers to do their fighting on land while they devoted themselves 
to commerce and trade. To them the Protestant revolt meant 
independence and prosperity. But in many other parts of 
Europe it meant a succession of horrors compared to which the 
last war was a mild excursion of kindly Sunday-school boys. 

The Thirty Years War which broke out in the year 1618 
and which ended with the famous treaty of Westphalia in 1648 
was the perfectly natural result of a century of ever increasing 



274 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

religious hatred. It was, as I have said, a terrible war. Every- 
body fought everybody else and the struggle ended only when 
all parties had been thoroughly exhausted and could fight no 
longer. 

In less than a generation it turned many parts of central 
Europe into a wilderness, where the hungry peasants fought 
for the carcass of a dead horse with the even hungrier wolf. 
Five-sixths of all the German towns and villages were de- 
stroyed. The Palatinate, in western Germany, was plundered 
twenty-eight times. And a population of eighteen million 
people was reduced to four million. 

The hostilities began almost as soon as Ferdinand II of 
the House of Habsburg had been elected Emperor. He was 
the product of a most careful Jesuit training and was a most 
obedient and devout son of the Church. The vow which he had 
made as a young man, that he would eradicate all sects and 
all heresies from his domains, Ferdinand kept to the best of 
his ability. Two days before his election, his chief opponent, 
Frederick, the Protestant Elector of the Palatinate and a 
son-in-law of James I of England, had been made King of 
Bohemia, in direct violation of Ferdinand's wishes. 

At once the Habsburg armies marched into Bohemia. The 
young king looked in vain for assistance against this formid- 
able enemy. The Dutch Republic was willing to help, but, 
engaged in a desperate war of its own with the Spanish branch 
of the Habsburgs, it could do little. The Stuarts in England 
were more interested in strengthening their own absolute power 
at home than spending money and men upon a forlorn adven- 
ture in far away Bohemia. After a struggle of a few months, 
the Elector of the Palatinate was driven away and his domains 
were given to the Catholic house of Bavaria. This was the be- 
ginning of the great war. 

Then the Habsburg armies, under Tilly and Wallenstein, 
fought their way through the Protestant part of Germany 
until they had reached the shores of the Baltic. A Catholic 
neighbour meant serious danger to the Protestant king of 
Denmark. Christian IV tried to defend himself by attacking 



RELIGIOUS WARFARE 



275 




< 
>^ 

>^ 
H 

Eh 

H 



276 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

his enemies before they had become too strong for him. The 
Danish armies marched into Germany but were defeated. 
Wallenstein followed up his victory with such energy and vio- 
lence that Denmark was forced to sue for peace. Only one 
town of the Baltic then remained in the hands of the Protes- 
tants. That was Stralsund. 

There, in the early summer of the year 1630, landed King 
Gustavus Adolphus of the house of Vasa, king of Sweden, 
and famous as the man who had defended his country against 
the Russians. A Protestant prince of unlimited ambition, 
desirous of making Sweden the centre of a great Northern 
Empire, Gustavus Adolphus was welcomed by the Protestant 
princes of Europe as the saviour of the Lutheran cause. He 
defeated Tilly, who had just successfully butchered the Prot- 
estant inhabitants of Magdeburg. Then his troops began their 
great march through the heart of Germany in an attempt to 
reach the Habsburg possessions in Italy. Threatened in the 
rear by the Catholics, Gustavus suddenly veered around and 
defeated the main Habsburg army in the battle of Liitzen. 
Unfortunately the Swedish king was killed when he strayed 
away from his troops, ^gut^the Habsburg power had been 
broken. 

Ferdinand, who was a suspicious sort of person, at once 
began to distrust his own servants. Wallenstein, his com- 
mander-in-chief, was murdered at his instigation. When the 
Catholic Bourbons, who ruled France and hated their Habs- 
burg rivals, heard of this, they joined the Protestant Swedes. 
The armies of Louis XIII invaded the eastern part of Ger- 
many, and Turenne and Conde added their fame to that of 
Baner and Weimar, the Sv>'edish generals, by murdering, pil- 
laging and burning Habsburg property. This brought great 
fame and riches to the Swedes and caused the Danes to become 
envious. The Protestant Danes thereupon declared war upon 
the Protestant Swedes who were the allies of the Catholic 
French, whose political leader, the Cardinal de Richelieu, had 
just deprived the Huguenots (or French Protestants) of those 



RELIGIOUS WARFARE 



277 



rights of public worship which the Edict of Nantes of the year 
1598 had guaranteed them. 

The war, after the habit of such encounters, did not decide 
anything, when it came to an end with the treaty of West- 
phalia in 1648. The Catholic powers remained Catholic and 
the Protestant powers stayed faithful to the doctrines of 
Luther and Calvin and Zwingli. The Swiss and Dutch Prot- 
estants were recognised as independent republics. France 
kept the cities of Metz and Toul and Verdun and a part of the 
Alsace. The Holy Roman Empire continued to exist as a sort 
of scare-crow state, without men, without money, without hope 
and without courage. 




AMSTERDAM IN 1648 



The only good the Thirty Years War accomplished was a 
negative one. It discouraged both Catholics and Protestants 
from ever trying it again. Henceforth they left each other in 
peace. This however did not mean that religious feehng and 
theological hatred had been removed from this earth. On the 
contrary. The quarrels between Catholic and Protestant 
came to an end, but the disputes between the different Prot- 
estant sects continued as bitterly as ever before. In Holland 
a difference of opinion as to the true nature of predestination 
(a very obscure point of theology, but exceedingly important 
in the eyes of your great-grandfather) caused a quarrel which 



^78 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

ended with the decapitation of John of Oldenbarneveldt, the 
Dutch statesman, who had been responsible for the success of 
the Repubhc during the first twenty years of its independence, 
and who was the great organising genius of her Indian trading 
company. In England, the feud led to civil war. 

But before I tell you of this outbreak which led to the first 
execution by process-of-law of a European king, I ought to 
say something about the previous history of England. In this 
book I am trying to give you only those events of the past 
which can throw a light upon the conditions of the present 
world. If I do not mention certain countries, the cause is not 
to be found in any secret dislike on my part. I wish that I 
could tell you what happened to Norway and Switzerland and 
Serbia and China. But these lands exercised no great influ- 
ence upon the development of Europe in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries. I therefore pass them by with a polite 
and very respectful bow. England however is in a different 
position. What the people of that small island have done dur- 
ing the last five hundred years has shaped the course of history 
in every corner of the world. Without a proper knowledge of 
the background of English history, you cannot understand 
what you read in the newspapers. And it is therefore necessary 
that you know how England happened to develop a parliamen- 
tary form of government while the rest of the European conti- 
nent was still ruled by absolute monarchs. 



THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 



HOW THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE "DIVINE 
RIGHT" OF KINGS AND THE LESS DIVINE 
BUT MORE REASONABLE "RIGHT OF PAR- 
LIAMENT" ENDED DISASTROUSLY FOR 
KING CHARLES II 

C^SAR, the earliest explorer of north-western Europe, had 
crossed the Channel in the year 55 B.C. and had conquered 
England. During four centuries the country then remained 
a Roman province. But when the Barbarians began to 
threaten Rome, the garrisons were called back from the fron- 
tier that they might defend the home country and Britannia 
was left without a government and without protection. 

As soon as this became known among the hungry Saxon 
tribes of northern Germany, they sailed across the North Sea 
and made themselves at home in the prosperous island. They 
founded a number of independent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms 
(so called after the original Angles or English and the Saxon 
invaders) but these small states were for ever quarrelling with 
each other and no King was strong enough to establish him- 
self as the head of a united country. For more than five hun- 
dred years, Mercia and Northumbria and Wessex and Sussex 
and Kent and East Anglia, or whatever their names, were 
exposed to attacks from various Scandinavian pirates. Finally 
in the eleventh century, England, together with Norway and 
northern Germany became part of the large Danish Empire 

279 



280 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



of Canute the Great and the last vestiges of independence 
disappeared. 

The Danes, in the course of time, were driven away but no 
sooner was England free, than it was conquered for the fourth 
time. The new enemies were the descendants of another tribe 
of Norsemen who early in the tenth century had invaded 
France and had founded the Duchy of Normandy. William, 







A/oR/uiA^dy ^^ ^Of^i/^ ^^/>^ ff£ 



THE ENGLISH NATION 

Duke of Normandy, who for a long time had looked across the 
water with an envious eye, crossed the Channel in October 
of the year 1066. At the battle of Hastings, on October the 
fourteenth of that year, he destroyed the weak forces of Harold 
of Wessex, the last of the Anglo-Saxon Kings and estabhshed 
himself as King of England. But neither William nor his 
successors of the House of Anjou and Plantagenet regarded 
England as their true home. To them the island was merely a 



THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 



281 



part of their great inheritance on the continent — a sort of 
colony inhabited by rather backward people upon whom they 
forced their own language and civilisation. Gradually how- 
ever the "colony" of England gained upon the "Mother 
country" of Normandy. At the same time the Kings of 




THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR 



France were trying desperately to get rid of the powerful Nor- 
man-English neighbours who were in truth no more than dis- 
obedient servants of the French crown. After a century of war- 
fare the French people, under the leadership of a young girl by 
the name of Joan of Ajtc, drove the "foreigners" from their 
soil. Joan herself, taken a prisoner at the battle of Compiegne 



S8^ THE STORY OF MANKIND 

in the year 1430 and sold by her Burgundian captors to the 
English soldiers, was burned as a witch. But the English 
never gained foothold upon the continent and their Kings were 
at last able to devote all their time to their British possessions. 
As the feudal nobility of the island had been engaged in one of 
those strange feuds which were as common in the middle ages 
as measles and small-pox, and as the greater part of the old 
landed proprietors had been killed during these so-called Wars 
of the Roses, it was quite easy for the Kings to increase their 
royal power. And by the end of the fifteenth century, Eng- 
land was a strongly centralised country, ruled by Henry VII 
of the House of Tudor, whose famous Court of Justice, the 
"Star Chamber" of terrible memory, suppressed all attempts 
on the part of the surviving nobles to regain their old influence 
upon the government of the country with the utmost severity. 

In the year 1509 Henry VII was succeeded by his son 
Henry VIII, and from that moment on the history of Eng- 
land gained a new importance for the country ceased to be a 
mediaeval island and became a modern state. 

Henry had no deep interest in religion. He gladly used a 
private disagreement with the Pope about one of his many 
divorces to declare himself independent of Rome and make 
the church of England the first of those "nationalistic churches" 
in which the worldly ruler also acts as the spiritual head of his 
subjects. This peaceful reformation of 1534 not only gave 
the house of Tudor the support of the English clergy, who 
for a long time had been exposed to the violent attacks of many 
Lutheran propagandists, but it also increased the Royal power 
through the confiscation of the former possessions of the mon- 
asteries. At the same time it made Henry popular with the 
merchants and tradespeople, who as the proud and prosperous 
inhabitants of an island which was separated from the rest of 
Europe by a wide and deep channel, had a great dislike for 
everything "foreign" and did not want an Italian bishop to rule 
their honest British souls. 

In 1547 Henry died. He left the throne to his small son, 
aged ten. The guardians of the child, favoring the modern 



THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 283 

Lutheran doctrines, did their best to help the cause of Protes- 
tantism. But the boy died before he was sixteen, and was suc- 
ceeded by his sister Mary, the wife of PhiHp II of Spain, who 
burned the bishops of the new "national church" and in other 
ways followed the example of her royal Spanish husband. 

Fortunately she died, in the year 1558, and was succeeded 
by Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, 
the second of his six wives, whom he had decapitated when she 
no longer pleased him. Elizabeth, who had spent some time in 
prison, and who had been released only at the request of the 
Holy Roman Emperor, was a most cordial enemy of every- 
thing Catholic and Spanish. She shared her father's indiffer- 
ence in the matter of religion but she inherited his ability as a 
very shrewd judge of character, and spent the forty-five years 
of her reign in strengthening the power of the dynasty and in 
increasing the revenue and possessions of her merry islands. 
In this she was most ably assisted by a number of men who 
gathered around her throne and made the Elizabethan age a 
period of such importance that you ought to study it in detail 
in one of the special books of which I shall tell you in the bibli- 
ography at the end of this volume. 

Elizabeth, however, did not feel entirely safe upon her 
throne. She had a rival and a very dangerous one. Mary, 
of the house of Stuart, daughter of a French duchess and a 
Scottish father, widow of king Francis II of France and 
daughter-in-law of Catherine of Medici (who had organised 
the murders of Saint Bartholomew's night) , was the mother of 
a little boy who was afterwards to become the first Stuart king 
of England. She was an ardent Catholic and a willing friend 
to those who were the enemies of Elizabeth. Her own lack 
of political ability and the violent methods which she employed 
to punish her Calvinistic subjects, caused a revolution in Scot- 
land and forced Mary to take refuge on English territory. For 
eighteen years she remained in England, plotting forever and 
a day against the woman who had given her shelter and who 
was at last obliged to follow the advice of her trusted coun- 
cilors "to cutte off the Scottish Queen's heade." 



284 



THE STORY OF ]\4ANKIND 



The head was duly "cutte off" in the year 1587 and caused 
a war with Spain. But the combined navies of England and 
Holland defeated Philip's Invincible Armada, as we have al- 
ready seen, and the blow which had been meant to destroy the 
power of the two great anti-Catholic leaders was turned into a 
profitable business adventure. 

For now at last, after many years of hesitation, the Eng- 
lish as well as the Dutch thought it their good right to invade 
the Indies and America and avenge the ills which their Protes- 




JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT SEE THE COAST OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



tant brethren had suffered at the hands of the Spaniards. The 
English had been among the earliest successors of Columbus. 
British ships, commanded by the Venetian pilot Giovanni Ca- 
boto (or Cabot) , had been the first to discover and explore the 
northern American continent in 1496. Labrador and New- 
foundland were of httle importance as a possible colony. But 
the banks of Newfoundland offered a rich reward to the 
English fishing fleet. A year later, in 1497, the same Cabot 
had explored the coast of Florida. 

Then had come the busy years of Henry VII and Henry 
VIII when there had been no money for foreign explorations. 



THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 



285 



But under Elizabeth, with the country at peace and Mary 
Stuart in prison, the sailors could leave their harbour without 
fear for the fate of those whom they left behind. While Eliza- 
beth was still a child, Willoughby had ventured to sail past the 
North Cape and one of his captains, Richard Chancellor, push- 
ing further eastward in his quest of a possible road to the In- 
dies, had reached Archangel, Russia, where he had established 
diplomatic and commercial relations with the mysterious rulers 
of this distant Muscovite Empire. During the first years of 




THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE 



Elizabeth's rule this voyage had been followed up by many 
others. Merchant adventurers, working for the benefit of a 
"joint stock Company" had laid the foundations of trading 
companies which in later centuries were to become colonies. 
Half pirate, half diplomat, willing to stake everything on a 
single lucky voyage, smugglers of everything that could be 
loaded into the hold of a vessel, dealers in men and merchandise 
with equal indifference to everything except their profit, the 
; sailors of Elizabeth had carried the English flag and the fame 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 

of their Virgin Queen to the four corners of the Seven Seas. 
Meanwhile WilHam Shakespeare kept her Majesty amused at 
home, and the best brains and the best wit of England co-op- 
erated with the queen in her attempt to change the feudal in- 
heritance of Henry VIII into a modern national state. 

In the year 1603 the old lady died at the age of seventy. 
Her cousin, the great-grandson of her own grandfather Henry 
VII and son of Mary Stuart, her rival and enemy, succeeded 
her as James I. By the Grace of God, he found himself the 
ruler of a country which had escaped the fate of its continental 
rivals. While the European Protestants and Catholics were 
killing each other in a hopeless attempt to break the power of 
their adversaries and establish the exclusive rule of their own 
particular creed, England was at peace and "reformed" at 
leisure without going to the extremes of either Luther or 
Loyola. It gave the island kingdom an enormous advantage in 
the coming struggle for colonial possessions. It assured Eng- 
land a leadership in international affairs which that country 
has maintained until the present day. Not even the disastrous 
adventure with the Stuarts was able to stop this normal de- 
velopment. 

The Stuarts, who succeeded the Tudors, were "foreigners" 
in England. They do not seem to have appreciated or under- 
stood this fact. The native house of Tudor could steal a horse, 
but the "foreign" Stuarts were not allowed to look at the 
bridle without causing great popular disapproval. Old Queen 
Bess had ruled her domains very much as she pleased. In 
general however, she had always followed a policy which meant 
money in the pocket of the honest (and otherwise) British mer- 
chants. Hence the Queen had been always assured of the 
wholehearted support of her grateful people. And small lib- 
erties taken with some of the rights and prerogatives of Parlia- 
ment were gladly overlooked for the ulterior benefits which 
were derived from her Majesty's strong and successful foreign 
policies. 

Outwardly King James continued the same policy. But he 
lacked that personal enthusiasm which had been so very typical 



THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 287 

of his great predecessor. Foreign commerce continued to be 
encouraged. The Catholics were not granted any liberties. 
But when Spain smiled pleasantly upon England in an effort 
to establish peaceful relations, James was seen to smile back. 
The majority of the English people did not like this, but 
. James was their King and they kept quiet. 

Soon there were other causes of friction. King James and 
his son, Charles I, who succeeded him in the year 1625 both 
firmly believed in the principle of their "divine right" to ad- 
minister their realm as they thought fit without consulting the 
wishes of their subjects. The idea was not new. The Popes, 
who in more than one way had been the successors of the 
Roman Emperors (or rather of the Roman Imperial ideal of 
a single and undivided state covering the entire known world ) , 
had always regarded themselves and had been publicly rec- 
ognised as the "Vice-Regents of Christ upon Earth." No one 
questioned the right of God to rule the world as He saw fit. 
As a natural result, few ventured to doubt the right of the 
divine "Vice-Regent" to do the same thing and to demand the 
obedience of the masses because he was the direct representa- 
tive of the Absolute Ruler of the Universe and responsible 
only to Almighty God. 

When the Lutheran Reformation proved successful, those 
rights which formerly had been invested in the Papacy were 
taken over by the jtnany European sovereigns who became 
Protestants. As head of their own national or dynastic 
churches they insisted upon being "Christ's Vice-Regents" 
within the limit of their own territory. The people did not ques- 
tion the right of their rulers to take such a step. They accepted 
it, just as we in our own day accept the idea of a representa- 
tive system which to us seems the only reasonable and just 
form of government. It is unfair therefore to state that either 
Lutheranism or Calvinism caused the particular feeling of irri- 
tation which greeted King James's oft and loudly repeated 
assertion of his "Divine Right." There must have been other 
grounds for the genuine English disbelief in the Divine Right 
of Kings. 



288 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

The first positive denial of the "Divine Right" of sovereigns 
had been heard in the Netherlands when the Estates General 
abjured their lawful sovereign King Philip II of Spain, in the 
year 1581. "The King," so they said, "has broken his contract 
and the King therefore is dismissed like any other unfaithful 
servant." Since then, this particular idea of a king's respon- 
sibilities towards his subjects had spread among many of the 
nations who inhabited the shores of the North Sea. They were 
in a very favourable position. They were rich. The poor peo- 
ple in the heart of central Europe, at the mercy of their 
Ruler's body-guard, could not aiFord to discuss a problem 
which would at once land them in the deepest dungeon of the 
nearest castle. But the merchants of Holland and England 
who possessed the capital necessary for the maintenance of 
great armies and navies, who knew how to handle the almighty 
weapon called "credit," had no such fear. They were willing 
to pit the "Divine Right" of their own good money against 
the, "Divine Right" of any Habsburg or Bourbon or Stuart. 
They knew that their guilders and shillings could beat the 
clumsy feudal armies which were the only weapons of the King. 
They dared to act, where others were condemned to suffer 
in silence or run the risk of the scaffold. 

When the Stuarts began to annoy the people of England 
with their claim that they had a right to do what they pleased 
and never mind the responsibility, the English middle classes 
used the House of Commons as their first line of defence 
against this abuse of the Royal Power. The Crown refused to 
give in and the King sent Parliament about its own business. 
Eleven long years, Charles I ruled alone. He levied taxes 
which most people regarded as illegal and he managed his 
British kingdom as if it had been his own country estate. He 
had capable assistants and we must say that he had the cour- 
age of his convictions. 

Unfortunately, instead of assuring himself of the support 
of his faithful Scottish subjects, Charles became involved in 
a quarrel with the Scotch Presbyterians. Much against his 
will, but forced by his need for ready cash, Charles was at 



THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 289 

last obliged to call Parliament together once more. It met in 
April of 1640 and showed an ugly temper. It was dissolved 
a few weeks later. A new Parliament convened in November. 
This one was even less pliable than the first one. The mem- 
bers understood that the question of "Government by Divine 
Right" or "Government by Parliament" must be fought out 
for good and all. They attacked the King in his chief council- 
lors and executed half a dozen of them. They announced that 
they would not allow themselves to be dissolved without their 
own approval. Finally on December 1, 1641, they presented 
to the King a "Grand Remonstrance" which gave a detailed ac- 
count of the many grievances of the people against their Ruler. 

Charles, hoping to derive some support for his own policy 
in the country districts, left London in January of 1642. Each 
side organised an army and prepared for open warfare be- 
tween the absolute power of the crown and the absolute power 
of Parliament. During this struggle, the most powerful reli- 
gious element of England, called the Puritans, (they were 
Anglicans who had tried to purify their doctrines to the most 
absolute limits), came quickly to the front. The regiments of 
"Godly men," commanded by Oliver Cromwell, with their 
iron discipline and their profound confidence in the holiness of 
their aims, soon became the model for the entire army of the 
opposition. Twice Charles was defeated. After the battle 
of Naseby, in 1645, he fled to Scotland. The Scotch sold him 
to the English. 

There followed a period of intrigue and an uprising 
of the Scotch Presbyterians against the English Puri- 
tans. In August of the year 1648 after the three-days battle of 
Preston Pans, Cromwell made an end to this second civil war, 
and took Edinburgh. Meanwhile his soldiers, tired of further 
talk and wasted hours of religious debate, had decided to act 
on their own initiative. They removed from Parliament all 
those who did not agree with ther own Puritan views. There- 
upon the "Rump," which was what was left of the old Parlia- 
ment, accused the King of high treason. The House of Lords 
refused to sit as a tribunal. A special tribunal was appointed 



290 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

and it condemned the King to death. On the 30th of January 
of the year 1649, King Charles walked quietly out of a win- 
dow of White Hall onto the scaffold. That day, the Sovereign 
People, acting through their chosen representatives, for the 
first time executed a ruler who had failed to understand his own 
position in the modern state. 

The period which followed the death of Charles is usually 
called after Oliver Cromwell. At first the unofficial Dictator 
of England, he was officially made Lord Protector in the year 
1653. He ruled five years. He used this period to continue 
the policies of Elizabeth. Spain once more became the arch 
enemy of England and war upon the Spaniard was made a na- 
tional and sacred issue. 

The commerce of England and the interests of the traders 
were placed before everything else, and the Protestant creed of 
the strictest nature was rigourously maintained. In maintaining 
England's position abroad, Cromwell was successful. As a 
social reformer, however, he failed very badly. The world is 
made up of a number of people and they rarely think alike. 
In the long run, this seems a very wise provision. A govern- 
ment of and by and for one single part of the entire commun- 
ity cannot possibly survive. The Puritans had been a great 
force for good when they tried to correct the abuse of the 
royal power. As the absolute Rulers of England they became 
intolerable. 

When Cromwell died in 1658, it was an easy matter for the 
Stuarts to return to their old kingdom. Indeed, they were 
welcomed as "deliverers" by the people who had found the 
yoke of the meek Puritans quite as hard to bear as that of auto- 
cratic King Charles. Provided the Stuarts were willing to for- 
get about the Divine Right of their late and lamented father 
and were willing to recognise the superiority of Parliament, the 
people promised that they would be loyal and faithful subjects. 

Two generations tried to make a success of this new ar- 
rangement. But the Stuarts apparently had not learned their 
lesson and were unable to drop their bad habits. Charles II, 
who came back in the year 1660, was an amiable but worthless 



THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 291 

person. His indolence and his constitutional insistence upon 
following the easiest course, together with his conspicuous suc- 
cess as a liar, prevented an open outbreak between himself and 
his people. By the act of Uniformity in 1662 he broke the 
power of the Puritan clergy by banishing all dissenting clergy- 
men from their parishes. By the so-called Conventicle Act of 
1664 he tried to prevent the Dissenters from attending religious 
meetings by a threat of deportation to the West Indies. This 
looked too much like the good old days of Divine Right. Peo- 
ple began to show the old and well-known signs of impatience, 
and Parliament suddenly experienced difficulty in providing 
the King with funds. 

Since he could not get money from an unwilling Pa^jliament, 
Charles borrowed it secretly from his neighbour and cousin, 
King Louis of France. He betrayed his Protestant allies in 
return for 200,000 pounds per year, and laughed at the poor 
simpletons of Parliament. 

Economic independence suddenly gave the King great faith 
in his own strength. He had spent many years of exile among 
his Catholic relations and he had a secret liking for their reli- 
gion. Perhaps he could bring England back to Rome! He 
passed a Declaration of Indulgence which suspended the old 
laws against the Catholics and Dissenters. This happened just 
when Charles' younger brother James was said to have become 
a Catholic. All this looked suspicious to the man in the street. 
People began to fear some terrible Popish plot. A new spirit 
of unrest entered the land. Most of the people wanted to pre- 
vent another outbreak of civil war. To them Royal Oppres- 
sion and a Catholic King — yea, even Divine Right, — were 
preferable to a new struggle between members of the same 
race. Others however were less lenient. They were the much- 
feared Dissenters, who invariably had the courage of their con- 
victions. They were led by several great noblemen who did 
not want to see a return of the old days of absolute royal 
power. 

For almost ten years, these two great parties, the Whigs 
(the middle class element, called by this derisive name be- 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 

cause in the year 1640 a lot of Scottish Whiggamores or horse- 
drovers headed by the Presbyterian clergy, had marched to 
Edinburgh to oppose the King) and the Tories (an epithet 
originally used against the Royalist Irish adherents but now 
applied to the supporters of the King) opposed each other, but 
neither wished to bring about a crisis. They allowed Charles to 
die peacefully in his bed and permitted the Catholic James II 
to succeed his brother in 1685. But when James, after threaten- 
ing the country with the terrible foreign invention of a "stand- 
ing army" (which was to be commanded by Catholic French- 
men), issued a second Declaration of Indulgence in 1688, and 
ordered it to be read in all Anglican churches, he went just a 
trifle beyond that line of sensible demarcation which can only be 
transgressed by the most popular of rulers under very ex- 
ceptional circumstances. Seven bishops refused to comply 
with the Royal Command. They were accused of "seditious 
libel." They were brought before a court. The jury which 
pronounced the verdict of "not guilty" reaped a rich harvest 
of popular approval. 

At this unfortunate moment, James (who in a second mar- 
riage had taken to wife Maria of the Catholic house of Modena- 
Este) became the father of a son. This meant that the throne 
was to go to a CathoHc boy rather than to his older sisters, 
Mary and Anne, who were Protestants. The man in the street 
again grew suspicious. Maria of Modena was too old to have 
children! It was all part of a plot! A strange baby had been 
brought into the palace by some Jesuit priest that England 
might have a Catholic monarch. And so on. It looked as if 
another civil war would break out. Then seven well-known 
men, both Whigs and Tories, wrote a letter asking the hus- 
band of James's oldest daughter Maiy, William III the Stadt- 
holder or head of the Dutch Republic, to come to England and 
deliver the country from its lawful but entirely undesirable 
sovereign. 

On the fifth of November of the year 1688, William landed 
at Torbay. As he did not wish to make a martjnr out of his 



THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 293 

father-in-law, he helped him to escape safely to France. On 
the 22nd of January of 1689 he summoned Parhament. On 
the 13th of February of the same year he and his wife Mary 
were proclaimed joint sovereigns of England and the country 
was saved for the Protestant cause. 

Parliament, having undertaken to be something more than 
a mere advisory body to the King, made the best of its oppor- 
tunities. The old Petition of Rights of the year 1628 was 
fished out of a forgotten nook of the archives. A second and 
more drastic Bill of Rights demanded that the sovereign of 
England should belong to the Anglican church. Furthermore 

^ it stated that the king had no right to suspend the laws or 
permit certain privileged citizens to disobey certain laws. It 
stipulated that "without consent of Parliament no taxes could 
be levied and no army could be maintained." Thus in the year 

. 1689 did England acquire an amount of liberty unknown in 

' any other country of Europe. 

But it is not only on account of this great liberal measure 
that the rule of William in England is still remembered. Dur- ^ 
ing his lifetime, government by a "responsible" ministry first ^ 
developed. No king of course can rule alone. He needs a few 
trusted advisors. The Tudors had their Great Council which 
was composed of Nobles and Clergy. This body grew too 
large. It was restricted to the small "Privy Council." In the 
course of time it became the custom of these councillors to meet 
the king in a cabinet in the palace. Hence they were called 
the "Cabinet Council." After a short while they were known 
as the "Cabinet." 

William, like most English sovereigns before him, had 
chosen his advisors from among all parties. But with the in- 
creased strength of Parliament, he had found it impossible to 
direct the politics of the country with the help of the Tories 
while the Whigs had a majority in the house of Commons. 
Therefore the Tories had been dismissed and the Cabinet Coun- 
cil had been composed entirely of Whigs. A few years later 
when the Whigs lost their power in the House of Commons, the 



294 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

king, for the sake of convenience, was obliged to look for his 
support among the leading Tories. Until his death in 1702, 
William was too busy fighting Louis of France to bother much 
about the government of England. Practically all important 
affairs had been left to his Cabinet Council. When William's 
sister-in-law, Anne, succeeded him in 1702 this condition of 
affairs continued. When she died in 1714 (and unfortunately 
not a single one of her seventeen children survived her) the 
throne went to George I of the House of Hanover, the son of 
Sophie, grand-daughter of James I. 

This somewhat rustic monarch, who never learned a word 
of English, was entirely lost in the complicated mazes of Eng- 
land's political arrangements. He left everything to his Cabi- 
net Council and kept away from their meetings, which bored 
him as he did not understand a single sentence. In this way 
the Cabinet got into the habit of ruling England and Scot- 
land (whose Parliament had been joined to that of England 
in 1707) without bothering the King, who was apt to spend 
a great deal of his time on the continent. 

During the reign of George I and George II, a succession of 
great Whigs (of whom one, Sir Robert Walpole, held office for 
twenty-one years) formed the Cabinet Council of the King. 
Their leader was finally recognised as the official leader not 
only of the actual Cabinet but also of the majority party in 
power in Parliament. The attempts of George III to take 
matters into his own hands and not to leave the actual busi- 
ness of government to his Cabinet were so disastrous that 
they were never repeated. And from the earliest years of the 
eighteenth century on, England enjoyed representative govern- 
ment, with a responsible ministry which conducted the affairs 
of the land. 

To be quite true, this government did not represent all 
classes of society. Less than one man in a dozen had the right 
to vote. But it was the foundation for the modern represent- 
ative form of government. In a quiet and orderly fashion it 
took the power away from the King and placed it in the hands 



THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 295 

of an ever increasing number of popular representatives. It did 
not bring the millenium to England, but it saved that coun- 
try from most of the revolutionary outbreaks which proved so 
disastrous to the European continent in the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries. 



IN FRANCE ON THE OTHER HAND THE "DI- 
VINE RIGHT OF KINGS" CONTINUED WITH 
GREATER POMP AND SPLENDOUR THAN 
EVER BEFORE AND THE AMBITION OF 
THE RULER WAS ONLY TEMPERED BY 
THE NEWLY INVENTED LAW OF THE 
"BALANCE OF POWER" 

As a contrast to the previous chapter, let me tell you what 
happened in France during the years when the English peo- 
ple were fighting for their liberty. The happy combination 
of the right man in the right country at the right moment is very 
rare in History. Louis XIV was a realisation of this ideal, as 
far as France was concerned, but the rest of Europe would 
have been happier without him. 

The country over which the young king was called to rule 
was the most populous and the most brilliant nation of that 
day. Louis came to the throne when Mazarin and Richelieu, 
the two great Cardinals, had just hammered the ancient French 
Kingdom into the most strongly centralised state of the seven- 
teenth century. He was himself a man of extraordinary abil- 
ity. We, the people of the twentieth century, are still sur- 
rounded by the memories of the glorious age of the Sun King. 
Our social life is based upon the perfection of manners and the 
elegance of expression attained at the court of Louis. In in- 
ternational and diplomatic relations, French is still the official 

296 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 297 

language of diplomacy and international gatherings because 
two centuries ago it reached a polished elegance and a purity 
of expression which no other tongue had as yet been able to 
equal. The theatre of King Louis still teaches us lessons 
which we are only too slow in learning. During his reign the 
French Academy (an invention of Richelieu) came to occupy 
a position in the world of letters which other countries have 
flattered by their imitation. We might continue this list for 
many pages. It is no matter of mere chance that our modern 
bill-of-fare is printed in French. The very diflicult art of 
decent cooking, one of the highest expressions of civilisation, 
was first practised for the benefit of the great Monarch. The 
age of Louis XIV was a time of splendour and grace which can 
still teach us a lot. 

Unfortunately this brilliant picture has another side which 
was far less encouraging. Glory abroad too often means 
misery at home, and France was no exception to this rule. 
Louis XIV succeeded his father m the year 1643. He died in 
the year 1715. That means that the government of France 
was in the hands of one single man for seventy-two years, 
almost two whole generations. 

It will be well to get a firm grasp of this idea, "one single 
man." Louis was the first of a long list of monarchs who in 
many countries established that particular form of highly effi- 
cient autocracy which we call "enhghtened despotism." He 
did not like kings who merely played at being rulers and 
turned official affairs into a pleasant picnic. The Kings of 
that enlightened age worked harder than any of their subjects. 
They got up earlier and went to bed later than anybody else, 
and felt their "divine responsibility" quite as strongly as their 
"divine right" which allowed them to rule without consulting 
their subjects. 

Of course, the king could not attend to everything in per- 
son. He was obliged to surround himself with a few helpers 
and councillors. One or two generals, some experts upon for- 
eign politics, a few clever financiers and economists would do 
for this purpose. But these dignitaries could act only through 



298 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

their Sovereign. They had no individual existence. To the 
mass of the people, the Sovereign actually represented in his 
own sacred person the government of their country. The 
glory of the common fatherland became the glory of a single 
dynasty. It meant the exact opposite of our own American 
ideal. France was ruled of and by and for the House of Bour- 
bon. 

The disadvantages of such a system are clear. The King 
grew to be everything. Everybody else grew to be nothing at 
all. The old and useful nobility was gradually forced to give 
up its former shares in the government of the provinces. A lit- 
tle Royal bureaucrat, his fingers splashed with ink, sitting be- 
hind the greenish windows of a government building in far- 
away Paris, now performed the task which a hundred years 
before had been the duty of the feudal Lord. The feudal Lord, 
deprived of all work, moved to Paris to amuse himself as best 
he could at the court. Soon his estates began to suffer from 
that very dangerous economic sickness, known as "Absentee 
Landlordism." Within a single generation, the industrious 
and useful feudal administrators had become the well-man- 
nered but quite useless loafers of the court of Versailles. 

Louis was ten years old when the peace of Westphalia was 
concluded and the House of Habsburg, as a result of the 
Thirty Years War, lost its predominant position in Europe. 
It was inevitable that a man with his ambition should use so 
favourable a moment to gain for his own dynasty the honours 
which had formerly been held by the Habsburgs. In the year 
1660 Louis had married Maria Theresa, daughter of the King 
of Spain. Soon afterward, his father-in-law, Philip IV, one 
of the half-witted Spanish Habsburgs, died. At once Louis 
claimed the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) as part of his 
wife's dowry. Such an acquisition would have been disastrous 
to the peace of Europe, and would have threatened the safety 
of the Protestant states. Under the leadership of Jan de Witt, 
Raadpensionaris or Foreign Minister of the United Seven 
Netherlands, the first great international alliance, the Triple 
Alliance of Sweden, England and Holland, of the year 1664, 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 



»99 



was concluded. It did not last long. With money and fair 
promises Louis bought up both King Charles and the Swedish 
Estates. Holland was betrayed by her allies and was left to 
her own fate. In the year 1672 the French invaded the low 
countries. They marched to the heart of the country. For a 
second time the dikes were opened and the Royal Sun of 
France set amidst the mud of the Dutch marshes. The peace 




THE BALANCE OF POWER 



of Nimwegen which was concluded in 1678 settled nothing but 
merely anticipated another war. 

A second war of aggression from 1689 to 1697, ending with 
the Peace of Ryswick, also failed to give Louis that position in 
the affairs of Europe to which he aspired. His old enemy, 
Jan de Witt, had been murdered by the Dutch rabble, but his 
successor, William III (whom you met in the last chapter), 
had checkmated all efforts of Louis to make France the ruler of 
Europe. 

The great war for the Spanish succession, begun in the 



300 • THE STORY OF MANKIND 

year 1701, immediately after the death of Charles II, the last 
of the Spanish Habsburgs, and ended in 1713 by the Peace 
of Utrecht, remained equally undecided, but it had ruined the 
treasury of Louis. On land the French king had been victor- 
ious, but the navies of England and Holland had spoiled all 
hope for an ultimate French victory ; besides the long struggle 
had given birth to a new and fundamental principle of inter- 
national politics, which thereafter made it impossible for one 
single nation to rule the whole of Europe or the whole of the 
world for any length of time. 

That was the so-called "balance of power." It was not a 
written law but for three centuries it has been obeyed as closely 
as are the laws of nature. The people who originated the idea 
maintained that Europe, in its nationalistic stage of develop- 
ment, could only survive when there should be an absolute bal- 
ance of the many conflicting interests of the entire continent. 
No single power or single dynasty must ever be allowed to 
dominate the others. During the Thirty Years War, the 
Habsburgs had been the victims of the application of this law. 
They, however, had been unconscious victims. The issues dur- 
ing that struggle were so clouded in a haze of religious strife 
that we do not get a very clear view of the main tendencies 
of that great conflict. But from that time on, we begin to see 
how cold, economic considerations and calculations prevail in 
all matters of international importance. We discover the de- 
velopment of a new type of statesman, the statesman with the 
personal feelings of the slide-rule and the cash-register. Jan 
de Witt was the first successful exponent of this new school 
of politics. WiUiam III was the first great pupil. And Louis 
XIV with all his fame and glory, was the first conscious victim. 
There have been many others since. 










THE RISE OF RUSSIA 



THE STORY OF THE MYSTERIOUS MOSCOVITE 
EMPIRE WHICH SUDDENLY BURST UPON 
THE GRAND POLITICAL STAGE OF EU- 
ROPE 

In the year 1492, as you know, Columbus discovered Amer- 
ica. Early in the year, a Tyrolese by the name of Schnups, 
travelling as the head of a scientific expedition for the 
Archbishop of Tyrol, and provided with the best letters 
of introduction and excellent credit tried to reach the mythical 
town of Moscow. He did not succeed. When he reached the 
frontiers of this vast Moscovite state which was vaguely sup- 
posed to exist in the extreme Eastern part of Europe, he was 
firmly turned back. No foreigners were wanted. And 
Schnups went to visit the heathen Turk in Constantinople, in 
order that he might have something to report to his clerical 
master when he came back from his explorations. 

Sixty-one years later, Richard Chancellor, trying to dis- 
cover the North-eastern passage to the Indies, and blown by 
an ill-wind into the White Sea, reached the mouth of the Dwina 
and found the Moscovite village of Kholmogory, a few hours 
from the spot where in 1584 the town of Archangel was found- 
ed. This time the foreign visitors were requested to come 
to Moscow and show themselves to the Grand Duke. They 
went and returned to England with the first commercial treaty 
ever concluded between Russia and the western world. Other 

301 



<i-' 



302 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

nations soon followed and something became known of this 
mysterious land. 

Geographically, Russia is a vast plain. The Ural moun- 
tains are low and form no barrier against invaders. The 
rivers are broad but often shallow. It was an ideal territory for 
nomads. 

While the Roman Empire was founded, grew in power and 
disappeared again, Slavic tribes, who had long since left their 
homes in Central Asia, wandered aimlessly through the forests 
and plains of the region between the Dniester and Dnieper 
rivers. The Greeks had sometimes met these Slavs and a few 
travellers of the third and fourth centuries mention them. 
Otherwise they were as little known as were the Nevada In- 
dians in the year 1800. 

Unfortunately for the peace of these primitive peoples, a 
very convenient trade-route ran through their country. This 
was the main road from northern Europe to Constantinople. 
It followed the coast of the Baltic until the Neva was reached. 
Then it crossed Lake Ladoga and went southward along the 
Volkhov river. Then through Lake Ilmen and up the small 
Lovat river. Then there was a short portage until the Dnieper 
was reached. Then down the Dnieper into the Black Sea. 

The Norsemen knew of this road at a very early date. In 
the ninth century they began to settle in northern Russia, just 
as other Norsemen were laying the foundation for independent 
states in Germany and France. But in the year 862, three 
Norsemen, brothers, crossed the Baltic and founded three small 
dynasties. Of the three brothers, only one, Rurik, lived for a 
number of years. He took possession of the territory of his 
brothers, and twenty years after the arrival of this first Norse- 
man, a Slavic state had been established with Kiev as its 
capital. 

From Kiev to the Black Sea is a short distance. Soon the 
existence of an organised Slavic State became known in Con- 
stantinople. This meant a new field for the zealous mission- 
aries of the Christian faith. Byzantine monks followed the 
Dnieper on their way northward and soon reached the heart of 



THE RISE OF RUSSIA 



303 



Lakb 







k 






Riiiei^ 







i«m 



9y i4 »» ^ 





THE ORIGIN OF RUSSIA 



804. [THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Russia. They found the people worshipping strange gods 
who were supposed to dwell in woods and rivers and in moun- 
tain eaves. They taught them the story of Jesus. There was 
no competition from the side of Roman missionaries. These 
good men were too busy educating the heathen Teutons to 
bother about the distant Slavs. Hence Russia received its reli- 
gion and its alphabet and its first ideas of art and architecture 
from the Byzantine monks and as the Byzantine empire (a 
relic of the eastern Roman empire) had become very oriental 
and had lost many of its European traits, the Russians suffered 
in consequence. 

Politically speaking these new states of the great Russian 
plains did not fare well. It was the Norse habit to divide 
every inheritance equally among all the sons. No sooner had 
a small state been founded but it was broken up among eight 
or nine heirs who in turn left their territory to an ever increas- 
ing number of descendants. It was inevitable that these small 
competing states should quarrel among themselves. Anarchy 
was the order of the day. And when the red glow of the east- 
ern horizon told the people of the threatened invasion of a sav- 
age Asiatic tribe, the little states were too weak and too divided 
to render any sort of defence against this terrible enemy. 

It was in the year 1224 that the first great Tartar invasion 
took place and that the hordes of Jenghiz Khan, the conqueror 
of China, Bokhara, Tashkent and Turkestan made their first 
appearance in the west. The Slavic armies were beaten near 
the Kalka river and Russia was at the mercy of the Mongo- 
lians. Just as suddenly as they had come they disappeared. 
Thirteen years later, in 1237, however, they returned. In less 
than five years they conquered every part of the vast Russian 
plains. Until the year 1380 when Dmitry Donskoi, Grand 
Duke of Moscow, beat them on the plains of Kulikovo, the 
Tartars were the masters of the Russian people. 

All in all, it took the Russians two centuries to dehver 
themselves from this yoke. For a yoke it was and a most 
offensive and objectionable one. It turned the Slavic peasants 
into miserable slaves. No Russian could hope to survive un- 



THE RISE OF RUSSIA 305 

less he was willing to creep before a dirty little yellow man who 
sat in a tent somewhere in the heart of the steppes of southern 
Russia and spat at him. It deprived the mass of the people of 
all feeling of honour and independence. It made hunger and 
misery and maltreatment and personal abuse the normal state 
of human existence. Until at last the average Russian, were he 
peasant or nobleman, went about his business like a neglected 
dog who has been beaten so often that his spirit has been broken 
and he dare not wag his tail without permission. 

There was no escape. The horsemen of the Tartar Khan 
were fast and merciless. The endless prairie did not give a 
man a chance to cross into the safe territory of his neighbour. 
He must keep quiet and bear what his yellow master decided 
to inflict upon him or run the risk of death. Of course, Europe 
might have interfered. But Europe was engaged upon busi- 
ness of its own, fighting the quarrels between the Pope and 
the emperor or suppressing this or that or the other heresy. 
And so Europe left the Slav to his fate, and forced him to 
work out his own salvation. 

The final saviour of Russia was one of the many small states, 
founded by the early Norse rulers. It was situated in the heart 
of the Russian plain. Its capital, Moscow, was upon a steep 
hill on the banks of the Moskwa river. This little principality, 
by dint of pleasing the Tartar (when it was necessary to 
please), and opposing him (when it was safe to do so), had, 
during the middle of the fourteenth century made itself the 
leader of a new national life. It must be remembered that the 
Tartars were wholly deficient in constructive political ability. 
They could only destroy. Their chief aim in conquering new 
territories was to obtain revenue. To get this revenue in the 
form of taxes, it was necessary to allow certain remnants of 
the old political organization to continue. Hence there were 
many little towns, surviving by the grace of the Great Khan, 
that they might act as tax-gatherers and rob their neighbours 
for the benefit of the Tartar treasury. 

The state of Moscow, growing fat at the expense of the 
surrounding territory, finally became strong enough to risk 



306 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

open rebellion against its masters, the Tartars. It was success- 
ful and its fame as the leader in the cause of Russian inde- 
pendence made Moscow the natural centre for all those who 
still believed in a better future for the Slavic race. In the year 
1453, Constantinople was taken by the Turks. Ten years 
later, under the rule of Ivan III, Moscow informed the 
western world that the Slavic state laid claim to the worldly 
and spiritual inheritance of the lost Byzantine Empire, and 
such traditions of the Roman empire as had survived in Con- 
stantinople. A generation afterwards, under Ivan the Terrible, 
the grand dukes of Moscow were strong enough to adopt the 
title of Caesar, or Tsar, and to demand recognition by the west- 
em powers of Europe. 

In the year 1598, with Feodor the First, the old Muscovite 
dynasty, descendants of the original Norseman Rurik, came to 
an end. For the next seven years, a Tartar half-breed, by the 
name of Boris Godunow, reigned as Tsar. It was during 
this period that the future destiny of the large masses of the 
Russian people was decided. This Empire was rich in land 
but very poor in money. There was no trade and there were 
no factories. Its few cities were dirty villages. It was com- 
posed of a strong central government and a vast number of 
illiterate peasants. This government, a mixture of Slavic, 
Norse, Byzantine and Tartar influences, recognised noth- 
ing beyond the interest of the state. To defend this state, it 
needed an army. To gather the taxes, which were necessary 
to pay the soldiers, it needed civil servants. To pay these many 
officials it needed land. In the vast wilderness on the east 
and west there was a sufficient supply of this commodity. But 
land without a few labourers to till the fields and tend the 
cattle, has no value. Therefore the old nomadic peasants 
were robbed of one privilege after the other, until finally, dur- 
ing the first year of the sixteenth century, they were formally 
made a part of the soil upon which they lived. The Russian 
peasants ceased to be free men. They became serfs or slaves 
and they remained serfs until the year 1861, when their fate 
had become so terrible that they were beginning to die out. 




MOSCOW 



THE RISE OF RUSSIA 307 

In the seventeenth century, this new state with its grow- 
ing territory which was spreading quickly into Siberia, had be- 
come a force with which the rest of Europe was obliged to 
reckon. In 1613, after the death of Boris Godunow, the 
Russian nobles had elected one of their own number to be 
Tsar. He was Michael, the son of Feodor, of the Moscow fam- 
ily of Romanow who lived in a little house just outside the 
Kremlin. 

In the year 1672 his great-grandson, Peter, the son of an- 
other Feodor, was born. When the child was ten years old, 
his step-sister Sophia took possession of the Russian throne. 
The little boy was allowed to spend his days in the suburbs of 
the national capital, where the foreigners lived. Surrounded 
by Scotch barkeepers, Dutch traders, Swiss apothecaries, Ital- 
ian barbers, French dancing teachers and German school-mas- 
ters, the young prince obtained a first but rather extraordinary 
impression of that far-away and mysterious Europe where 
things were done differently. 

When he was seventeen years old, he suddenly pushed 
Sister Sophia from the throne. Peter himself became the ruler 
of Russia. He was not contented with being the Tsar of a 
semi-barbarous and half- Asiatic people. He must be the sov- 
ereign head of a civilised nation. To change Russia overnight 
from a Byzantine-Tartar state into a European empire was no 
small undertaking. It needed strong hands and a capable 
head. Peter possessed both. In the year 1698, the great op- 
eration of grafting Modern Europe upon Ancient Russia was 
performed. The patient did not die. But he never got over 
the shock, as the events of the last five years have shown very 
plainly. 



RUSSIA vs. SWEDEN 



RUSSIA AND SWEDEN FIGHT MANY WARS TO 
DECIDE WHO SHALL BE THE LEADING 
POWER OF NORTH-EASTERN EUROPE 



In the year 1698, Tsar 
Peter set forth upon his first 
voyage to western Europe. He 
travelled by way of Berlin and 
went to Holland and to Eng- 
land. As a child he had almost 
been drowned sailing a home- 
made boat in the duck pond of 
his father's country home. This 
passion for water remained 
with him to the end of his life. 
In a practical way it showed I 
itself in his wish to give his 
land-locked domains access to 
the open sea. 

While the unpopular and harsh young ruler was away 
from home, the friends of the old Russian ways in Moscow set 
to work to undo all his reforms. A sudden rebellion among 
his life-guards, the Streltsi regiment, forced Peter to hasten 
home by the fast mail. He appointed himself executioner-in- 
chief and the Streltsi were hanged and quartered and killed to 
the last man. Sister Sophia, who had been the head of the 
rebellion, was locked up in a cloister and the rule of Peter be- 

308 




PETER THE GREAT IN 
THE DUTCH SHIPYARD 



RUSSIA vs. SWEDEN 309 

gan in earnest. This scene was repeated in the year 1716 when 
Peter had gone on his second western trip. That time the 
reactionaries followed the leadership of Peter's half-witted 
son, Alexis. Again the Tsar returned in great haste. Alexis 
was beaten to death in his prison cell and the friends of the 
old fashioned Byzantine ways marched thousands of dreary 
miles to their final destination in the Siberian lead mines. 
After that, no further outbreaks of popular discontent took 
place. Until the time of his death, Peter could reform in peace. 

It is not easy to give you a list of his reforms in chronologi- 
cal order. The Tsar worked with furious haste. He followed 
no system. He issued his decrees with such rapidity that it is 
difficult to keep count. Peter seemed to feel that everything 
that had ever happened before was entirely wrong. The whole 
of Russia therefore must be changed within the shortest possible 
time. When he died he left behind a well-trained army of 
200,000 men and a navy of fifty ships. The old system of gov- 
ernment had been abolished over night. The Duma, or con- 
vention of Nobles, had been dismissed and in its stead, the Tsar 
had surrounded himself with an advisory board of state offi- 
cials, called the Senate. 

Russia was divided into eight large "governments" or prov- 
inces. Roads were constructed. Towns were built. Industries 
were created wherever it pleased the Tsar, without any regard 
for the presence of raw material. Canals were dug and mines 
were opened in the mountains of the east. In this land of illiter- 
ates, schools were founded and establishments of higher learn- 
ing, together with Universities and hospitals and professional 
schools. Dutch naval engineers and tradesmen and artisans 
from all over the world were encouraged to move to Russia. 
Printing shops were established, but all books must be first read 
by the imperial censors. The duties of each class of society 
were carefully written down in a new law and the entire system 
of civil and criminal laws was gathered into a series of printed 
volumes. The old Russian costumes were abolished by Im- 
perial decree, and policemen, armed with scissors, watching 
all the country roads, changed the long-haired Russian mou- 



310 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



jiks suddenly into a pleasing imitation of smooth-shaven west- 
Europeans. 

In religious matters, the Tsar tolerated no division of 
power. There must be no chance of a rivalry between an Em- 
peror and a Pope as had happened in Europe. In the year 
1721, Peter made himself head of the Russian Church. The 
Patriarchate of Moscow was abolished and the Holy Synod 
made its appearance as the highest source of authority in all 
matters of the Established Church. 

Since, however, these many reforms could not be success- 




PETER THE GREAT BUILDS HIS NEW CAPITAL 



ful while the old Russian elements had a rallying point in the 
town of Moscow, Peter decided to move his government to a 
new capital. Amidst the unhealthy marshes of the Baltic Sea 
the Tsar built this new city. He began to reclaim the land in 
the year 1703. Forty thousand peasants worked for years 
to lay the foundations for this Imperial city. The Swedes at- 
tacked Peter and tried to destroy his town and illness and 
misery killed tens of thousands of the peasants. But the work 
was continued, winter and summer, and the ready-made town 
soon began to grow. In the year 1712, it was officially de- 



RUSSIA vs. SWEDEN 811 

clared to be the "Imperial Residence." A dozen years later 
it had 75,000 inhabitants. Twice a year the whole city was 
flooded by the Neva. But the terrific will-power of the Tsar 
created dykes and canals and the floods ceased to do harm. 
When Peter died in 1725 he was the owner of the largest city 
in northern Europe. 

Of course, this sudden growth of so dangerous a rival had 
been a source of great worry to all the neighbours. From his 
side, Peter had watched with interest the many adventures of 
his Baltic rival, the kingdom of Sweden. In the year 1654, 
Christina, the only daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, the hero 
of the Thirty Years War, had renounced the throne and had 
gone to Rome to end her days as a devout Catholic. A Protes- 
tant nephew of Gustavus Adolphus had succeeded the last 
Queen of the House of Vasa. Under Charles X and Charles 
XI, the new dynasty had brought Sweden to its highest point 
of development. But in 1697, Charles XI died suddenly and 
was succeeded by a boy of fifteen, Charles XII. 

This was the moment for which many of the northern states 
had waited. During the great religious wars of the seventeenth 
century, Sweden had grown at the expense of her neighbours. 
The time had come, so the owners thought, to balance the ac- 
count. At once war broke out between Russia, Poland, Den- 
mark and Saxony on the one side, and Sweden on the other. 
The raw and untrained armies of Peter were disastrously beat- 
en by Charles in the famous battle of Narva in November of 
the year 1700. Then Charles, one of the most interesting mili- 
tary geniuses of that century, turned against his other enemies 
and for nine years he hacked and burned his way through the 
villages and cities of Poland, Saxony, Demnark and the Baltic 
provinces, while Peter drilled and trained his soldiers in distant 
Russia. 

As a result, in the year 1709, in the battle of Poltawa, the 
Moscovites destroyed the exhausted armies of Sweden. Charles 
continued to be a highly picturesque figure, a wonderful hero 
of romance, but in his vain attempt to have his revenge, he 
ruined his own country. In the year 1718, he was accidentally 



312 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

killed or assassinated (we do not know which) and when peace 
was made in 1721, in the town of Nystadt, Sweden had lost all 
of her former Baltic possessions except Finland. The new 
Russian state, created by Peter, had become the leading power 
of northern Europe. But already a new rival was on the 
way. The Prussian state was taking shape. 



THE RISE OF PRUSSIA 



THE EXTRAORDINARY RISE OF A LITTLE 
STATE IN A DREARY PART OF NORTHERN 
GERMANY, CALLED PRUSSIA 

The history of Prussia is the history of a frontier district. 
In the ninth century, Charlemagne had transferred the old 
centre of civihsation from the Mediterranean to the wild regions 
of northwestern Europe. His Prankish soldiers had pushed 
the frontier of Europe further and further towards the east. 
They had conquered many lands from the heathenish Slavs and 
Lithuanians who were living in the plain between the Baltic 
Sea and the Carpathian Mountains, and the Franks adminis- 
tered those outlying districts just as the United States used 
to administer her territories before they achieved the dignity 
of statehood. 

The frontier state of Brandenburg had been originally 
founded by Charlemagne to defend his eastern possessions 
against raids of the wild Saxon tribes. The Wends, a Slavic 
tribe which inhabited that region, were subjugated during the 
tenth century and their market-place, by the name of Brenna- 
bor, became the centre of and gave its name to the new province 
of Brandenburg. 

During the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
turies, a succession of noble families exercised the functions of 
imperial governor in this frontier state. Finally in the 
fifteenth century, the House of Hohenzollern made its appear- 

313 



314 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

ance, and as Electors of Brandenburg, commenced to change a 
sandy and forlorn frontier territory into one of the most ef- 
ficient empires of the modern world. 

These Hohenzollerns, who have just been removed from 
the historical stage by the combined forces of Europe and 
America, came originally from southern Germany. They were 
of very humble origin. In the twelfth century a certain Fred- 
erick of Hohenzollern had made a lucky marriage and had been 
appointed keeper of the castle of Nuremberg. His descendants 
had used every chance and every opportunity to improve their 
power and after several centuries of watchful grabbing, they 
had been appointed to the dignity of Elector, the name given to 
those sovereign princes who were supposed to elect the Em- 
perors of the old German Empire. During the Reformation, 
they had taken the side of the Protestants and the early seven- 
teenth century found them among the most powerful of the 
north German princes. 

During the Thirty Years War, both Protestants and 
Catholics had plundered Brandenburg and Prussia with equal 
zeal. But under Frederick William, the Great Elector, the 
damage was quickly repaired and by a wise and careful use of 
all the economic and intellectual forces of the country, a state 
was founded in which there was practically no waste. 

Modern Prussia, a state in which the individual and his 
wishes and aspirations have been entirely absorbed by the 
interests of the community as a whole — this Prussia dates back 
to the father of Frederick the Great. Frederick Wilham I was 
a hard working, parsimonious Prussian sergeant, with a great 
love for bar-room stories and strong Dutch tobacco, an intense 
dislike of all frills and feathers, (especially if they were of 
French origin,) and possessed of but one idea. That idea was 
Duty. Severe with himself, he tolerated no weakness in his 
subjects, whether they be generals or common soldiers. The 
relation between himself and his son Frederick was never cor- 
dial, to say the least. The boorish manners of the father of- 
fended the finer spirit of the son. The son's love for French 
manners, literature, philosophy and music was rejected by the 



THE RISE OF PRUSSIA 315 

father as a manifestation of sissy-ness. There followed a ter- 
rible outbreak between these two strange temperaments. Fred- 
erick tried to escape to England. He was caught and court- 
martialed and forced to witness the decapitation of his best 
friend who had tried to help him. Thereupon as part of his 
punishment, the young prince was sent to a little fortress some- 
where in the provinces to be taught the details of his future 
business of being a king. It proved a blessing in disguise. 
When Frederick came to the throne in 1740, he knew how his 
country was managed from the birth certificate of a pauper's 
son to the minutest detail of a complicated annual Budget. 

As an author, especially in his book called the "Anti- 
Macchiavelli," Frederick had expressed his contempt for the 
political creed of the ancient Florentine historian, who had 
advised his princely pupils to lie and cheat whenever it was 
necessary to do so for the benefit of their country. The ideal 
ruler in Frederick's volume was the first servant of his people, 
the enlightened despot after the example of Louis XIV. In 
practice, however, Frederick, while working for his people 
twenty hours a day, tolerated no one to be near him as a coun- 
sellor. His ministers were superior clerks. Prussia was his 
private possession, to be treated according to his own wishes. 
And nothing was allowed to interfere with the interest of the 
state. 

In the year 1740 the Emperor Charles VI, of Austria, 
died. He had tried to make the position of his only daughter, 
Maria Theresa, secure through a solemn treaty, written black 
on white, upon a large piece of parchment. But no sooner had 
the old emperor been deposited in the ancestral crypt of the 
Habsburg family, than the armies of Frederick were marching 
towards the Austrian frontier to occupy that part of Silesia for 
which (together with almost everything else in central Eu- 
rope) Prussia clamored, on account of some ancient and very 
doubtful rights of claim. In a number of wars, Frederick 
conquered all of Silesia, and although he was often very near 
defeat, he maintained himself in his newly acquired territories 
against all Austrian counter-attacks. 



316 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Europe took due notice of this sudden appearance of a 
very powerful new state. In the eighteenth century, the Ger- 
mans were a people who had been ruined by the great religious 
wars and who were not held in high esteem by any one. Fred- 
erick, by an effort as sudden and quite as terrific as that of 
Peter of Russia, changed this attitude of contempt into one 
of fear. The internal affairs of Prussia were arranged so 
skillfully that the subjects had less reason for complaint than 
elsewhere. The treasury showed an annual surplus instead of a 
deficit. Torture was abolished. The judiciary system was im- 
proved. Good roads and good schools and good universities, 
together with a scrupulously honest administration, made the 
people feel that whatever services were demanded of them, 
they (to speak the vernacular) got their money's worth. 

After having been for several centuries the battle field of 
the French and the Austrians and the Swedes and the Danes 
and the Poles, Germany, encouraged by the example of Prus- 
sia, began to regain self-confidence. And this was the work of 
the little old man, with his hook-nose and his old uniforms cov- 
ered with snuff, who said very funny but very unpleasant things 
about his neighbours, and who played the scandalous game of 
eighteenth century diplomacy without any regard for the truth, 
provided he could gain something by his lies. This in spite of 
his book, "Anti-Macchiavelli." In the year 1786 the end 
came. His friends were all gone. Children he had never had. 
He died alone, tended by a single servant and his faithful 
dogs, whom he loved better than human beings because, as he 
said, they were never ungrateful and remained true to their 
friends. 



HOW THE NEWLY FOUNDED NATIONAL OR 
DYNASTIC STATES OF EUROPE TRIED TO 
MAKE THEMSELVES RICH AND WHAT WAS 
MEANT BY THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM 

We have seen how, during the sixteenth and the seventeenth 
centuries, the states of our modern world began to take shape. 
Their origins were different in almost every case. Some had 
been the result of the deliberate eff'ort of a single king. Others 
had happened by chance. Still others had been the result of 
favourable natural geographic boundaries. But once they had 
been founded, they had all of them tried to strengthen their 
internal administration and to exert the greatest possible in- 
fluence upon foreign aff'airs. All this of course had cost a great 
deal of money. The mediaeval state with its lack of centralised 
power did not depend upon a rich treasury. The king got his 
revenues from the crown domains and his civil service paid for 
itself. The modern centralised state was a more complicated 
aff*air. The old knights disappeared and hired government 
officials or bureaucrats took their place. Army, navy, and in- 
ternal administration demanded millions. The question then 
became — where was this money to be found? 

Gold and silver had been a rare commodity in the middle 
ages. The average man, as I have told you, never saw a gold 
piece as long as he lived. Only the inhabitants of the large 

317 



318 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 




^y-±2±^^-^ 



THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM 319 

cities were familiar with silver coin. The discovery of America 
and the exploitation of the Peruvian mines changed all this. 
The centre of trade was transferred from the Mediterranean to 
the Atlantic seaboard. The old "commercial cities" of Italy lost 
their financial importance. New "commercial nations" took 
their place and gold and silver were no longer a curiosity. 

Through Spain and Portugal and Holland and England, 
precious metals began to find their way to Europe. The six- 
teenth century had its own writers on the subject of political 
economy and they evolved a theory of national wealth which 
seemed to them entirely sound and of the greatest possible 
benefit to their respective countries. They reasoned that both 
gold and silver were actual wealth. Therefore they believed 
that the country with the largest supply of actual cash in the 
vaults of its treasury and its banks was at the same time the 
richest country. And since money meant armies, it followed 
that the richest country was also the most powerful and could 
rule the rest of the world. 

We call this system the "mercantile system," and it was 
accepted with the same unquestioning faith with which the 
early Christians believed in Miracles and many of the present- 
day American business men believe in the Tariff. In practice, 
the Mercantile system worked out as follows: To get the 
largest surplus of precious metals a country must have a 
favourable balance of export trade. If you can export more to 
your neighbour than he exports to your own country, he will 
owe you money and will be obliged to send you some of his 
gold. Hence you gain and he loses. As a result of this creed, 
the economic program of almost every seventeenth century 
state was as follows : 

1. Try to get possession of as many precious metals 

as you can. 

2. Encourage foreign trade in preference to domestic 

trade. 

3. Encourage those industries which change raw ma- 

terials into exportable finished products. 



320 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

4. Encourage a large population, for you will need work- 

men for your factories and an agricultural com- 
munity does not raise enough workmen. 

5. Let the State watch this process and interfere when- 

ever it is necessary to do so. 

Instead of regarding International Trade as something 
akin to a force of nature which would always obey certain nat- 
ural laws regardless of man's interference, the people of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tried to regulate their com- 
merce by the help of official decrees and royal laws and financial 
help on the part of the government. 

In the sixteenth century Charles V adopted this Mercan- 
tile System (which was then something entirely new) and in- 
troduced it into his many possessions. Elizabeth of England 
flattered him by her imitation. The Bourbons, especially King 
Louis XIV, were fanatical adherents of this doctrine and Col- 
bert, his great minister of finance, became the prophet of Mer- 
cantilism to whom all Europe looked for guidance. 

The entire foreign policy of Cromwell was a practical ap- 
plication of the Mercantile System. It was invariably directed 
against the rich rival Republic of Holland, For the Dutch 
shippers, as the common-carriers of the merchandise of Eu- 
rope, had certain leanings towards free-trade and therefore had 
to be destroyed at all cost. 

It will be easily understood how such a system must affect 
the colonies. A colony under the Mercantile System became 
merely a reservoir of gold and silver and spices, which was 
to be tapped for the benefit of the home country. The Asiatic, 
American and African supply of precious metals and the raw 
materials of these tropical countries became a monopoly of 
the state which happened to own that particular colony. 'No 
outsider was ever allowed within the precincts and no native 
was permitted to trade with a merchant whose ship flew a for- 
eign flag. 

Undoubtedly the Mercantile System encouraged the de- 
velopment of young industries in certain countries where there 
never had been any manufacturing before. It built roads 



THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM 




HOW EUROPE CONQUERED THE WORLD 



322 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



and dug canals and made for better means of transportation. 
It demanded greater skill among the workmen and gave the 
merchant a better social position, while it weakened the power 
of the landed aristocracy. 

On the other hand, it caused very great misery. It made 
the natives in the colonies the victims of a most shameless ex- 
ploitation. It exposed the citizens of the home country to an 
even more terrible fate. It helped in a great measure to turn 




SEA POWER 



every land into an armed camp and divided the world into little 
bits of territory, each working for its own direct benefit, 
while striving at all times to destroy the power of its neigh- 
bours and get hold of their treasures. It laid so much stress 
upon the importance of owning wealth that "being rich" came 
to be regarded as the sole virtue of the average citizen. Eco- 
nomic systems come and go like the fashions in surgery and 
in the clothes of women, and during the nineteenth century the 
Mercantile System was discarded in favor of a system of free 
and open competition. At least, so I have been told. 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 



AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
EUROPE HEARD STRANGE REPORTS OF 
SOMETHING WHICH HAD HAPPENED IN 
THE WILDERNESS OF THE NORTH AMER- 
ICAN CONTINENT. THE DESCENDANTS 
OF THE MEN WHO HAD PUNISHED KING 
CHARLES FOR HIS INSISTENCE UPON HIS 
"DIVINE RIGHTS" ADDED A NEW CHAP- 
TER TO THE OLD STORY OF THE STRUG- 
GLE FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT 



For the sake of conveni- 
ence, we ought to go back a 
few centuries and repeat the 
early history of the great 
struggle for colonial posses- 
sions. 

As soon as a number of 
European nations had been 
created upon the new basis of 
national or dynastic interests, 
that is to say, during and im- 
mediately after the Thirty 
Years War, their rulers, 
backed up by the capital of 
their merchants and the ships of 

their trading companies, continued the fight for more terri- 
tory in Asia, Africa and America. 

323 




THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY 



324 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



The Spaniards and the Portuguese had been exploring the 
Indian Sea and the Pacific Ocean for more than a century ere 
Holland and England appeared upon the stage. This proved 
an advantage to the latter. The first rough work had already- 
been done. What is more, the earliest navigators had so often 
made themselves unpopular with the Asiatic and American and 
African natives that both the English and the Dutch were 
welcomed as friends and deliverers. We cannot claim any 




THE PILGRIMS 



superior virtues for either of these two races. But they were 
merchants before everything else. They never allowed religious 
considerations to interfere with their practical common sense. 
During their first relations with weaker races, all European na- 
tions have behaved with shocking brutality. The English and 
the Dutch, however, knew better where to draw the line. Pro- 
vided they got their spices and their gold and silver and their 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 



325 




HOW THE WHITE MAN SETTLED IN NORTH AMERICA 



326 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

taxes, they were willing to let the native live as it best pleased 
him. 

It was not very difficult for them therefore to establish 
themselves in the richest parts of the world. But as soon as 
this had been accomplished, they began to fight each other for 
still further possessions. Strangely enough, the colonial wars 
were never settled in the colonies themselves. They were de- 
cided three thousand miles away by the navies of the contending 
countries. It is one of the most interesting principles of an- 
cient and modern warfare (one of the few reliable laws of 
history) that "the nation which commands the sea is also the 
nation which commands the land." So far this law has never 
failed to work, but the modern airplane may have changed it. 
In the eighteenth century, however, there were no flying ma- 
chines and it was the British navy which gained for England 
her vast American and Indian and African colonies. 

The series of naval wars between England and Holland in 
the seventeenth century does not interest us here. It ended as 
all such encounters between hopelessly ill-matched powers will 
end. But the warfare between England and France (her other 
rival) is of greater importance to us, for while the superior 
British fleet in the end defeated the French navy, a great deal 
of the preliminary fighting was done on our own American 
continent. In this vast country, both France and England 
claimed everything which had been discovered and a lot more 
which the eye of no white man had ever seen. In 1497 Cabot 
had landed in the northern part of America and twenty-seven 
years later, Giovanni Verrazano had visited these coasts. Cabot 
had flown the English flag. Verrazano had sailed under the 
French flag. Hence both England and France proclaimed 
themselves the owners of the entire continent. 

During the seventeenth century, some ten small English 
colonies had been founded between Maine and the Carolinas. 
They were usually a haven of refuge for some particular sect 
of English dissenters, such as the Puritans, who in the year 
1620 went to New England, or the Quakers, who settled in 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 



327 



Pennsylvania in 1681. They were small frontier communi- 
ties, nestling close to the shores of the ocean, where people had 
gathered to make a new home and begin life among happier 
surroundings, far away from royal supervision and interfer- 



ence. 



The French colonies, on the other hand, always remained 
a possession of the crown. No Huguenots or Protestants were 




IN THE CABIN OF THE MAYFLOWER 

allowed in these colonies for fear that they might contaminate 
the Indians with their dangerous Protestant doctrines and 
would perhaps interfere with the missionary work of the Jesuit 
fathers. The English colonies, therefore, had been founded 
upon a much healthier basis than their French neighbours and 
rivals. They were an expression of the commercial energy of 
the English middle classes, while the French settlements were 
inhabited by people who had crossed the ocean as servants of 



328 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



the king and who expected to return to Paris at the first possi- 
ble chance. 

Pohtically, however, the position of the English colonies 
was far from satisfactory. The French had discovered the 
mouth of the Saint Lawrence in the sixteenth century. From 
the region of the Great Lakes they had worked their way south- 
ward, had descended the Mississippi and had built several forti- 
fications along the Gulf of Mexico. After a century of explo- 
ration, a line of sixty French forts cut off the English settle- 
ments along the Atlantic seaboard from the interior. 




THE FRENCH EXPLORE THE WEST 

The English land grants, made to the different colonial 
companies had given them "all land from sea to sea." This 
sounded well on paper, but in practice, British territory 
ended where the line of French fortifications began. To break 
through this barrier was possible but it took both men and 
money and caused a series of horrible border wars in which 
both sides murdered their white neighbours, with the help of the 
Indian tribes. 

As long as the Stuarts had ruled England there had been 
no danger of war with France. The Stuarts needed the Bour- 
bons in their attempt to establish an autocratic from of govern- 
ment and to break the power of Parliament. But in 1689 the 
last of the Stuarts had disappeared from British soil and Dutch 




THE BLOCKHOUSE IX THE WH^DERNESS 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 



329 



William, the great enemy of Louis XIV succeeded him. From 
that time on, until the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France and 
England fought for the possession of India and North Amer- 
ica. 

During these wars, as I have said before, the English navies 
invariably beat the French. Cut off from her colonies, France 
lost most of her possessions, and when peace was declared, the 
entire North American continent had fallen into British hands 
and the great work of exploration of Cartier, Champlain, La 
Salle, Marquette and a score of others was lost to France. 




THE FIRST WINTER IN NEW ENGLAND 



Only a very small part of this vast domain was inhabited. 
From Massachusetts in the north, where the Pilgrims (a sect 
of Puritans who were very intolerant and who therefore had 
found no happiness either in Anglican England or Calvinist 
Holland) had landed in the year 1620, to the Carolinas and 
Virginia, (the tobacco-raising provinces which had been found- 
ed entirely for the sake of profit,) stretched a thin line of 
sparsely populated territory. But the men who lived in this 
new land of fresh air and high skies were very different from 
their brethren of the mother country. In the wilderness they 
had learned independence and self-reliance. They were the 
sons of hardy and energetic ancestors. Lazy and timourous 
people did not cross the ocean in those days. The American 



330 THE STORY OF IVIANKIND 

colonists hated the restraint and the lack of breathing space 
which had made their lives in the old country so very unhappy. 
They meant to be their own masters. This the ruling classes 
of England did not seem to understand. The government an- 
noyed the colonists and the colonists, who hated to be bothered 
in this way, began to annoy the British government. 

Bad feeling caused more bad feeling. It is not necessary 
to repeat here in detail what actually happened and what might 
have been avoided if the British king had been more intelli- 
gent than George III or less given to drowsiness and indiffer- 
ence than his minister, Lord North. The British colonists, 
when they understood that peaceful arguments would not 
settle the difficulties, took to arms. From being loyal sub- 
jects, they turned rebels, who exposed themselves to the pun- 
ishment of death when they were captured by the German 
soldiers, whom George hired to do his fighting after the pleas- 
ant custom of that day, when Teutonic princes sold whole 
regiments to the highest bidder. 

The war between England and her American colonies 
lasted seven years. During most of that time, the final suc- 
cess of the rebels seemed very doubtful. A great number of 
the people, especially in the cities, had remained loyal to their 
king. They were in favour of a compromise, and would have 
been willing to sue for peace. But the great figure of Wash- 
ington stood guard over the cause of the colonists 

Ably assisted by a handful of brave men, he used his stead- 
fast but badly equipped armies to weaken the forces of the king. 
Time and again when defeat seemed unavoidable, his strategy 
turned the tide of battle. Often his men were ill-fed. During 
the winter they lacked shoes and coats and were forced to live 
in unhealthy dug-outs. But their trust in their great leader 
was absolute and they stuck it out until the final hour of victorj^ 

But more interesting than the campaigns of Washmgton 
or the diplomatic triumphs of Benjamin Franklin who was 
in Europe getting money from the French government and 
the Amsterdam bankers, was an event which occurred early in 
the revolution. The representatives of the different colonies 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 



331 



had gathered in Philadelphia to discuss matters of common 
importance. It was the first year of the Revolution. Most 
of the big towns of the sea coast were still in the hands of the 
British. Reinforcements from England were arriving by the 
ship load. Only men who were deeply convinced of the right- 
eousness of their cause would have found the courage to take 
tlie momentous decision of the months of June and July of 
the year 1776. 




GEORGE WASHINGTON 



In June, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a mo- 
tion to the Continental Congress that "these united colonies 
are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that 
they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and 
that all political connection between them and the state of 
Great Britain is and ought to be, totally dissolved." 

The motion was seconded by John Adams of Massachu- 
setts. It was carried on July the second and on July fourth, 
it was followed by an official Declaration of Independence, 
which was the work of Thomas Jefferson, a serious and ex- 
ceedingly capable student of both politics and government and 



332 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 






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THE GREAT AMERICAN REVOLUTION 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 333 

destined to be one of the most famous of our American presi- 
dents. 

When news of this event reached Europe, and was fol- 
lowed by the final victory of the colonists and the adoption of 
the famous Constitution of the year 1787 (the first of all writ- 
ten constitutions) it caused great interest. The dynastic sys- 
tem of the highly centralised states which had been developed 
after the great religious wars of the seventeenth century had 
reached the height of its power. Everywhere the palace of 
the king had grown to enormous proportions, while the cities 
of the royal realm were being surrounded by rapidly growing 
acres of slums. The inhabitants of those slums were showing 
signs of restlessness. They were quite helpless. But the 
higher classes, the nobles and the professional men, they too 
were beginning to have certain doubts about the economic and 
political conditions under which they lived. The success of 
the American colonists showed them that many things were 
possible which had been held impossible only a short time 
before. 

According to the poet, the shot which opened the battle 
of Lexington was "heard around the world." That was a bit 
of an exaggeration. The Chinese and the Japanese and the 
Russians (not to speak of the Australians, who had just been 
re-discovered by Captain Cook, whom they had killed for his 
trouble,) never heard of it at all. But it carried across the 
Atlantic Ocean. It landed in the powder house of European 
discontent and in France it caused an explosion which rocked 
the entire continent from Petrograd to Madrid and buried the 
representatives of the old statecraft and the old diplomacy 
under several tons of democratic bricks. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PRO- 
CLAIMS THE PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY, 
FRATERNITY AND EQUALITY UNTO ALL 
THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH 

Before we talk about a revolution it is just as well that 
we explain just what this word means. In the terms of a 
great Russian writer (and Russians ought to know what they 
are talking about in this field) a revolution is "a swift over- 
throw, in a few years, of institutions which have taken cen- 
turies to root in the soil, and seem so fixed and immovable that 
even the most ardent reformers hardly dare to attack them in 
their writings. It is the fall, the crumbhng away in a brief 
period, of all that up to that time has composed the essence 
of social, religious, political and economic life in a nation." 

Such a revolution took place in France in the eighteenth 
century when the old civilisation of the country had grown 
stale. The king in the days of Louis XIV had become 
EVERYTHING and was the state. The NobiHty, formerly 
the civil servant of the federal state, found itself without any 
duties and became a social ornament of the royal court. 

This French state of the eighteenth century, however, cost 
incredible sums of money. This money had to be produced 
in the form of taxes. Unfortunately the kings of France had 
not been strong enough to force the nobility and the clergy 
to pay their share of these taxes. Hence the taxes were paid 

334 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 335 

entirely by the agricultural population. But the peasants 
living in dreary hovels, no longer in intimate contact with their 
former landlords, but victims of cruel and incompetent land 
agents, were going from bad to worse. Why should they 
work and exert themselves? Increased returns upon their 
land merely meant more taxes and nothing for themselves 
and therefore they neglected their fields as much as they dared. 

Hence we have a king who wanders in empty splendour 
through the vast halls of his palaces, habitually followed by 
hungry office seekers, all of whom live upon the revenue ob- 
tained from peasants who are no better than the beasts of the 
fields. It is not a pleasant picture, but it is not exaggerated. 
There was, however, another side to the so-called "Ancien 
Regime" which we must keep in mind. 

A wealthy middle class, closely connected with the nobility 
(by the usual process of the rich banker's daughter marrying 
the poor baron's son) and a court composed of all the most 
entertaining people of France, had brought the polite art of 
graceful living to its highest development. As the best brains 
of the country were not allowed to occupy themselves with 
questions of political economics, they spent their idle hours 
upon the discussion of abstract ideas. 

As fashions in modes of thought and personal behaviour 
are quite as likely to run to extremes as fashion in dress, it 
was natural that the most artificial society of that day should 
take a tremendous interest in what they considered "the simple 
life." The king and the queen, the absolute and unquestioned 
proprietors of this country called France, together with all its 
colonies and dependencies, went to live in funny little country 
houses all dressed up as milk-maids and stable-boys and played 
at being shepherds in a happy vale of ancient Hellas. Around 
them, their courtiers danced attendance, their court-musicians 
composed lovely minuets, their court barbers devised more 
and more elaborate and costly headgear, until from sheer bore- 
dom and lack of real jobs, this whole artificial world of Ver- 
sailles (the great show place which Louis XIV had built far 
away from his noisy and restless city) talked of nothing but 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 

those subjects which were furthest removed from their own 
lives, just as a man who is starving will talk of nothing except 
food. 

When Voltaire, the courageous old philosopher, play- 
wright, historian and novelist, and the great enemy of all 
religious and political tyranny, began to throw his bombs of 
criticism at everything connected with the Established Order 
of Things, the whole French world applauded him and his 
theatrical pieces played to standing room only. When Jean 
Jacques Rousseau waxed sentimental about primitive man 
and gave his contemporaries delightful descriptions of the 
happiness of the original inhabitants of this planet, (about 
whom he knew as little as he did about the children, upon whose 
education he was the recognised authority,) all France read 
his "Social Contract" and this society in which the king and 
the state were one, wept bitter tears when they heard Rous- 
seau's appeal for a return to the blessed days when the real 
sovereignty had lain in the hands of the people and when the 
king had been merely the servant of his people. 

When Montesquieu published his "Persian Letters" in 
which two distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole ex- 
isting society of France topsy-turvy and poke fun at every- 
thing from the king down to the lowest of his six hundred 
pastry cooks, the book immediately went through four 
editions and assured the writer thousands of readers for his 
famous discussion of the "Spirit of the Laws" in which the 
noble Baron compared the excellent English system with the 
backward system of France and advocated instead of an abso- 
lute monarchy the establishment of a state in which the Execu- 
tive, the Legislative and the Judicial powers should be in 
separate hands and should work independently of each other. 
When Lebreton, the Parisian book-seller, announced that 
Messieurs Diderot, d'Alembert, Turgot and a score of other 
distinguished writers were going to publish an Encyclopjedia 
which was to contain "all the new ideas and the new science 
and the new knowledge," the response from the side of the 
pubhc was most satisfactory, and when after twenty-two years 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



337 



the last of the twenty-eight volumes had been finished, the 
somewhat belated interference of the police could not repress 
the enthusiasm with which French society received this most 
important but very dangerous contribution to the discussions 
of the day. 

Here, let me give you a little warning. When you read a 
novel about the French revolution or see a play or a movie, 
you will easily get the impression that the Revolution was the 

work of the rabble from the 
Paris slums. It was nothing 
of the kind. The mob appears 
often upon the revolutionary 
stage, but invariably at the in- 
stigation and under the lead- 
ership of those middle-class 
professional men who used the 
hungry multitude as an effi- 
cient ally in their warfare upon 
the king and his court. But 
the fimdamental ideas which 
caused the revolution were in- 
vented by a few brilliant minds, 
and they were at first intro- 
duced into the charming draw- 
ing-rooms of the "Ancien 
Regime" to provide amiable 
diversion' for the much-bored ladies and gentlemen of his 
Majesty's court. These pleasant but careless people played 
with the dangerous fireworks of social criticism until the sparks 
fell through the cracks of the floor, which was old and rotten 
just like the rest of the building. Those sparks unfortunately 
landed in the basement where age-old rubbish laj^ in gi'eat 
confusion. Then there was a cry of fire. But the owner of 
the house who was interested in everything except the manage-, 
ment of his property, did not know how to put the small blaze 
out. The flame spread rapidly and the entire edifice was 
consumed by the conflagration, which we call the Great French 
Revolution. 




THE GUILLOTINE 



338 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

For the sake of convenience, we can divide the French 
Revolution into two parts. From 1789 to 1791 there was a 
more or less orderly attempt to introduce a constitutional 
monarchy. This failed, partly through lack of good faith and 
stupidity on the part of the monarch himself, partly through 
circumstances over which nobody had any control. 

From 1792 to 1799 there was a Republic and a first effort 
to establish a democratic form of government. But the actual 
outbreak of violence had been preceded by many years of 
unrest and many sincere but ineffectual attempts at reform. 

When France had a debt of 4000 million francs and the 
treasury was always empty and there was not a single thing 
upon which new taxes could be levied, even good King Louis 
(who was an expert locksmith and a great hunter but a very 
poor statesman) felt vaguely that something ought to be done. 
Therefore he called for Turgot, to be his Minister of Finance. 
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de I'Aulne, a man in the 
early sixties, a splendid representative of the fast disappearing 
class of landed gentry, had been a successful governor of a 
province and was an amateur political economist of great abil- 
ity. He did his best. Unfortunately, he could not perform 
miracles. As it was impossible to squeeze more taxes out of 
the ragged peasants, it was necessary to get the necessary funds 
from the nobility and clergy who had never paid a centime. 
This made Turgot the best hated man at the court of Versailles. 
Furthermore he was obliged to face the enmity of JNIarie 
Antoinette, the queen, who was against everybody who dared 
to mention the word "economy" within her hearing. Soon 
Turgot was called an "unpractical visionary" and a "theoreti- 
cal professor" and then of course his position became unten- 
able. In the year 1776 he was forced to resign. 

After the "professor" there came a man of Practical Busi- 
ness Sense. He was an industrious Swiss by the name of 
Necker who had made himself rich as a grain speculator and 
the partner in an international banking house. His ambitious 
wife had pushed him into the government service that she 
might establish a position for her daughter who afterwards as 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



339 



the wife of the Swedish minister in Paris, Baron de Stael, 
became a famous literary figure of the early nineteenth cen- 
tury. 

Necker set to work with a fine display of zeal just as Turgot 
had done. In 1781 he published a careful review of the French 
finances. The king understood nothing of this "Compte 
Rendu." He had just sent troops to America to help the colo- 
nists against their common enemies, the EngHsh. This expe- 
dition proved to be unexpect- 
edly expensive and Necker was 
asked to find the necessary 
funds. When instead of pro- 
ducing revenue, the published 
more figures and made statistics 
and began to use the dreary 
warning about "necessary econ- 
omies" his days were numbered. 
In the year 1781 he was dis- 
missed as an incompetent 
servant. 

After the Professor and the 
Practical Business Man came 
the delightful type of financier 
who will guarantee everybody 
100 per cent, per month on 
their money if only they will 
trust his own infallible system. 

He was Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a pushing official, 
who had made his career both by his industry and his com- 
plete lack of honesty and scruples. He found the country 
heavily indebted, but he was a clever man, willing to oblige 
everybody, and he invented a quick remedy. He paid the 
old debts by contracting new ones. This method is not new. 
The result since time immemorial has been disastrous. In 
less than three years more than 800,000,000 francs had been 
added to the French debt by this charming Minister of Finance 
who never worried and smilingly signed his name to every 
demand that was made by His Majesty and by his lovely 




LOUIS XVI 



340 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Queen, who had learned the habit of spending during the days 
of her youth in Vienna. 

At last even the Parliament of Paris (a high court of jus- 
tice and not a legislative body) although by no means lacking 
in loyalty to their sovereign, decided that something must be 
done. Calonne wanted to borrow another 80,000,000 francs. 
It had been a bad year for the crops and the misery and hunger 
in the country districts were terrible. Unless something sensi- 
ble were done, France would go bankrupt. The King as always 
was unaware of the seriousness of the situation. Would it not 
be a good idea to consult the representatives of the people? 
Since 1614 no Estates General had been called together. In 
view of the threatening panic there was a demand that the 
Estates be convened. Louis XVI however, who never could 
take a decision, refused to go as far as that. 

To pacify the popular clamour he called together a meeting 
of the Notables in the year 1787. This merely meant a gath- 
ering of the best families who discussed what could and should 
be done, without touching their feudal and clerical privilege 
of tax-exemption. It is unreasonable to expect that a certain 
class of society shall commit political and economic suicide for 
the benefit of another group of fellow-citizens. The 127 
Notables obstinately refused to surrender a single one of their 
ancient rights. The crowd in the street, being now exceed- 
ingly hungry, demanded that Necker, in whom they had confi- 
dence, be reappointed. The Notables said "No." The crowd 
in the street began to smash windows and do other unseemly 
things. The Notables fled. Calonne was dismissed. 

A new colourless Minister of Finance, the Cardinal 
Lomenie de Brienne, was appointed and Louis, driven by the 
violent threats of his starving subjects, agreed to call together 
the old Estates General as "soon as practicable." This vague 
promise of course satisfied no one. 

No such severe winter had been experienced for almost a 
century. The crops had been either destroyed by floods or had 
been frozen to death in the fields. All the olive trees of the 
Provence had been killed. Private charity tried to do some- 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 341 

thing but could accomplish little for eighteen million starving 
people. Everywhere bread riots occurred. A generation be- 
fore these would have been put down by the army. But the 
work of the new philosophical school had begun to bear fruit. 
People began to understand that a shotgun is no effective 
remedy for a hungry stomach and even the soldiers (who came 
from among the people) were no longer to be depended upon. 
It was absolutely necessary that the king should do something 
definite to regain the popular goodwill, but again he hesitated. 

Here and there in the provinces, little independent Repub- 
lics were established by followers of the new school. The cry 
of "no taxation without representation" (the slogan of the 
American rebels a quarter of a century before) was heard 
among the faithful middle classes. France was threatened with 
general anarchy. To appease the people and to increase the 
royal popularity, the government unexpectedly suspended the 
former very strict form of censorship of books. At once a 
flood of ink descended upon France. Everybody, high or 
low, criticised and was criticised. More than 2000 pam- 
phlets were published. Lomenie de Brienne was swept away 
by a storm of abuse. Necker was hastily called back to placate, 
as best he could, the nation-wide um-est. Immediately the stock 
market went up thirty per cent. And by common consent, peo- 
ple suspended judgment for a little while longer. In May of 
1789 the Estates General were to assemble and then the wisdom 
of the entire nation would speedily solve the difficult problem 
of recreating the kingdom of France into a healthy and happy 
state. 

This prevailing idea, that the combined wisdom of the 
people would be able to solve all difficulties, proved disastrous. 
It lamed all personal effort during many important months. 
Instead of keeping the government in his own hands at this 
critical moment, Necker allowed everything to drift. Hence 
there was a new outbreak of the acrimonious debate upon the 
best ways to reform the old kingdom. Everywhere the power 
of the police weakened. The people of the Paris suburbs. 



34S 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



under the leadership of professional agitators, gradually be- 
gan to discover their strength, and commenced to play the role 
which was to be theirs all through the years of the great unrest, 
when they acted as the brute force which was used by the actual 
leaders of the Revolution to secure those things which could 
not be obtained in a legitimate fashion. 

As a sop to the peasants and the middle class, Necker de- 



^mmm 




THE BASTILLE 



cided that they should be allowed a double representation in 
the Estates General. Upon this subject, the Abbe Sieyes then 
wrote a famous pamphlet, "To what does the Third Estate 
Amount?" in which he came to the conclusion that the Third 
Estate (a name given to the middle class) ought to amount to 
everything, that it had not amounted to anything in the past, 
and that it now desired to amount to something. He expressed 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 343 

the sentiment of the great majority of the people who had the 
best interests of the country at heart. 

Finally the elections took place under the worst conditions 
imaginable. When they were over, 308 clergymen, 285 noble- 
men and 621 representatives of the Third Estate packed their 
trunks to go to Versailles. The Third Estate was obliged to 
carry additional luggage. This consisted of voluminous re- 
ports called "cahiers" in which the many complaints and griev- 
ances of their constituents had been written down. The stage 
was set for the great final act that was to save France. 

The Estates General came together on May 5th, 1789. 
The king was in a bad humour. The Clergy and the Nobility 
let it be known that they were unwilling to give up a single one 
of their privileges. The king ordered the three groups of rep- 
resentatives to meet in different rooms and discuss their griev- 
ances separately. The Third Estate refused to obey the royal 
command. They took a solemn oath to that effect in a squash 
court, (hastily put in order for the purpose of this illegal meet- 
ing) on the 20th of June, 1789. They insisted that all three 
Estates, Nobility, Clergy and Third Estate, should meet to- 
gether and so informed His Majesty. The king gave in. 

As the "National Assembly," the Estates General began 
to discuss the state of the French kingdom. The King got 
angry. Then again he hesitated. He said that he would never 
surrender his absolute power. Then he went hunting, forgot 
all about the cares of the state and when he returned from the 
chase he gave in. For it was the royal habit to do the right 
thing at the wrong time in the wrong way. When the people 
clamoured for A, the king scolded them and gave them nothing. 
Then, when the Palace was surrounded by a howling multitude 
of poor people, the king surrendered and gave his subjects 
what they had asked for. By this time, however, the people 
wanted A plus B. The comedy was repeated. When the king 
signed his name to the Royal Decree which granted his beloved 
subjects A and B they were threatening to kill the entire royal 
family unless they received A plus B plus C. And so on, 
through the whole alphabet and up to the scaffold. 



344 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Unfortunately the king was always just one letter behind. 
He never understood this. Even when he laid his head under 
the guillotine, he felt that he was a much-abused man who had 
received a most unwarrantable treatment at the hands of peo- 
ple whom he had loved to the best of his limited ability. 

Historical "ifs," as I have often warned you, are never of 
any value. It is very easy for us to say that the monarchy 
might have been saved "if" Louis had been a man of greater 
energy and less kindness of heart. But the king was not alone. 
Even "if" he had possessed the ruthless strength of Napoleon, 
his career during these difficult days might have been easily 
ruined by his wife who was the daughter of Maria Theresa of 
Austria and who possessed all the characteristic virtues and 
vices of a young girl who had been brought up at the most 
autocratic and mediaeval court of that age. 

She decided that some action must be taken and planned a 
counter-revolution. Necker was suddenly dismissed and loyal 
troops were called to Paris. The people, when they heard of 
this, stormed the fortress of the Bastille prison, and on the 
fourteenth of July of the year 1789, they destroyed this 
familiar but much-hated symbol of Autocratic Power 
which had long since ceased to be a political prison and 
was now used as the city lock-up for pickpockets and second- 
story men. Many of the nobles took the hint and left the 
country. But the king as usual did nothing. He had been 
hunting on the day of the fall of the Bastille and he had shot 
several deer and felt very much pleased. 

The National Assembly now set to work and on the 4th of 
August, with the noise of the Parisian multitude in their ears, 
they abolished all privileges. This was followed on the 27th 
of August by the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," the 
famous preamble to the first French constitution. So far so 
good, but the court had apparently not yet learned its lesson. 
There was a wide-spread suspicion that the king was again 
trying to interfere with these reforms and as a result, on the 
5th of October, there was a second riot in Paris. It spread to 
Versailles and the people were not pacified until they had 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 345 

brought the king back to his palace in Paris. They did not 
trust him in Versailles. They liked to have him where they 
could watch him and control his correspondence with his rela- 
tives in Vienna and Madrid and the other courts of Europe. 

In the Assembly meanwhile, Mirabeau, a nobleman who 
had become leader of the Third Estate, was beginning to put 
order into chaos. But before he could save the position of the 
king he died, on the 2nd of April of the year 1791. The king, 
who now began to fear for his own life, tried to escape on the 
21st of June. He was recognised from his picture on a coin, 
was stopped near the village of Varennes by members of the 
National Guard, and was brought back to Paris. 

In September of 1791, the first constitution of France was 
accepted, and the members of the National Assembly went 
home. On the first of October of 1791, the legislative assem- 
bly came together to continue the work of the National 
Assembly. In this new gathering of popular representatives 
there were many extremely revolutionary elements. The 
boldest among these were known as the Jacobins, after the old 
Jacobin cloister in which they held their pohtical meetings. 
These young men (most of them belonging to the professional 
classes) made very violent speeches and when the newspapers 
carried these orations to Berlin and Vienna, the King of 
Prussia and the Emperor decided that they must do something 
to save their good brother and sister. They were very busy 
just then dividing the kingdom of Poland, where rival politi- 
cal factions had caused such a state of disorder that the country 
was at the mercy of anybody who wanted to take a couple of 
provinces. But they managed to send an army to invade 
France and deliver the king. 

Then a terrible panic of fear swept throughout the land 
of France. All the penj-up hatred of years of hunger and 
suffering came to a horrible climax. The mob of Paris stormed 
the palace of the Tuilleries. The faithful Swiss bodyguards 
tried to defend their master, but Louis, unable to make up his 
mind, gave order to "cease firing" just when the crowd was 
retiring. The people, drunk with blood and noise and cheap 



846 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

wine, murdered the Swiss to the last man, then invaded the 
palace, and went after Louis who had escaped into the meeting 
hall of the Assembly, where he was immediately suspended of 
his office, and from where he was taken as a prisoner to the 
old castle of the Temple. 

But the armies of Austria and Prussia continued their ad- 
vance and the panic changed into hysteria and turned men and 
women into wild beasts. In the first week of September of 
the year 1792, the crowd broke into the jails and murdered all 
the prisoners. The government did not interfere. The Jaco- 
bins, headed by Danton, knew that this crisis meant either the 
success or the failure of the revolution, and that only the most 
brutal audacity could save them. The Legislative Assembly 
was closed and on the 21st of September of the year 1792, a 
new National Convention came together. It was a body com- 
posed almost entirely of extreme revolutionists. The king was 
formally accused of high treason and was brought before the 
Convention. He was found guilty and by a vote of 361 to 360 
(the extra vote being that of his cousin the Duke of Orleans) 
he was condemned to death. On the 21st of January of the 
year 1793, he quietly and with much dignity suffered himself 
to be taken to the scaffold. He had never understood what all 
the shooting and the fuss had been about. And he had been too 
proud to ask questions. 

Then the Jacobins turned against the more moderate ele- 
ment in the convention, the Girondists, called after their south- 
ern district, the Gironde. A special revolutionary tribunal was 
instituted and twenty-one of the leading Girondists were con- 
demned to death. The others committed suicide. They were 
capable and honest men but too philosophical and too moderate 
to survive during these frightful years. 

In October of the year 1793 the Constitution was 
suspended by the Jacobins "until peace should have been 
declared." All power was placed in the hands of a small com- 
mittee of Public Safety, with Danton and Robespierre as its 
leaders. The Christian religion and the old chronology were 
abolished. The "Age of Reason" (of which Thomas Paine had 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



347 



written so eloquently during the American Revolution) had 
come and with it the "Terror" which for more than a year killed 
good and bad and indifferent people at the rate of seventy or 
eighty a day. 

The autocratic rule of the King had been destroyed. It 
was succeeded by the tyranny of a few people who had such a 
passionate love for democratic virtue that they felt compelled 
to kill all those who disagreed with them. France was turned 




THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
INVADES HOLLAND 

into a slaughter house. Everybody suspected everybody else. 
No one felt safe. Out of sheer fear, a few members of the old 
Convention, who knew that they were the next candidates for 
the scaffold, finally turned against Robespierre, who had 
already decapitated most of his former colleagues. Robes- 
pierre, "the only true and pure Democrat," tried to kill him- 
self but failed. His shattered jaw was hastily bandaged and 
he was dragged to the guillotine. On the 27th of July, of the 
year 1794 (the 9th Thermidor of the year II, according to the 
strange chronology of the revolution) , the reign of Terror came 
to an end, and all Paris danced with joy. 



348 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

The dangerous position of France, however, made it neces- 
sary that the government remain in the hands of a few strong 
men, until the many enemies of the revolution should have been 
driven from the soil of the French fatherland. While the 
half-clad and half-starved revolutionary armies fought their 
desperate battles of the Rhine and Italy and Belgium and 
Egypt, and defeated every one of the enemies of the Great 
Revolution, five Directors were appointed, and they ruled 
France for four years. Then the power was vested in the hands 
of a successful general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, 
who became "First-Consul" of France in the year 1799. And 
during the next fifteen years, the old European continent be- 
came the laboratory of a number of political experiments, the 
like of which the world had never seen before. 



NAPOLEON 

Napoleon was born in the year 1769, the third son 
of Carlo Maria Buonaparte, an honest notary public of 
the city of Ajaccio in the island of Corsica, and his good 
wife, Letizia Ramolino. He therefore was not a Frenchman, 
but an Italian whose native island (an old Greek, Cartha- 
ginian and Roman colony in the Mediterranean Sea) had 
for years been struggling to regain its independence, 
first of all from the Genoese, and after the middle of the 
eighteenth century from the French, who had kindly offered 
to help the Corsicans in their struggle for freedom and had 
then occupied the island for their own benefit. 

During the first twenty years of his life, young Napoleon 
was a professional Corsican patriot — a Corsican Sinn Feiner, 
who hoped to deliver his beloved country from the yoke of the 
bitterly hated French enemy. But the French revolution had 
unexpectedly recognised the claims of the Corsicans and gradu- 
ally Napoleon, who had received a good training at the military 
school of Brienne, drifted into the service of his adopted coun- 
try. Although he never learned to spell French correctly or 
to speak it without a broad Italian accent, he became a French- 
man. In due time he came to stand as the highest expression 
of all French virtues. At present he is regarded as the symbol 
of the Gallic genius. 

Napoleon was what is called a fast worker. His career 

349 



350 THE STORY OF IVIANKIND 

does not cover more than twenty years. In that short span 
of time he fought more wars and gained more victories and 
marched more miles and conquered more square kilometers and 
killed more people and brought about more reforms and gen- 
erally upset Europe to a greater extent than anybody (includ- 
ing Alexander the Great and Jenghis Khan) had ever man- 
aged to do. 

He was a little fellow and during the first years of his life 
his health was not very good. He never impressed anybody 
by his good looks and he remained to the end of his days very 
clumsy whenever he was obliged to appear at a social function. 
He did not enjoy a single advantage of breeding or birth or 
riches. For the greater part of his youth he was desperately 
poor and often he had to go without a meal or was obliged 
to make a few extra pennies in curious ways. 

He gave little promise as a literary genius. When he com- 
peted for a prize oiFered by the Academy of Lyons, his essay 
was found to be next to the last and he was number 15 out of 
16 candidates. But he overcame all these difficulties through 
his absolute and unshakable belief in his own destiny, and in 
his own glorious future. Ambition was the main-spring of his 
life. The thought of self, the worship of that capital letter 
"N" with which he signed all his letters, and which recurred 
forever in the ornaments of his hastily constructed palaces, the 
absolute will to make the name Napoleon the most important 
thing in the world next to the name of God, these desires car- 
ried Napoleon to a pinnacle of fame which no other man has 
ever reached. 

When he was a half-pay lieutenant, young Bonaparte was 
very fond of the "Lives of Famous Men" which Plutarch, the 
Roman historian, had written. But he never tried to live up 
to the high standard of character set by these heroes of the 
older days. Napoleon seems to have been devoid of all those 
considerate and thoughtful sentiments which make men 
different from the animals. It will be very difficult to decide 
with any degree of accuracy whether he ever loved anyone 
besides himself. He kept a civil tongue to his mother, but 



NAPOLEON 351 

Letizia had the air and manners of a great lady and after the 
fashion of Itahan mothers, she knew how to rule her brood of 
children and command their respect. For a few years he was 
fond of Josephine, his pretty Creole wife, who was the daugh- 
ter of a French officer of Martinique and the widow of the 
Vicomte de Beauharnais, who had been executed by Robes- 
pierre when he lost a battle against the Prussians. But 
the Emperor divorced her when she failed to give him a son 
and heir and married the daughter of the Austrian Emperor, 
because it seemed good policy. 

During the siege of Toulon, where he gained great fame 
as commander of a battery. Napoleon studied Macchiavelli 
with industrious care. He followed the advice of the Floren- 
tine statesman and never kept his word when it was to his 
advantage to break it. The word "gratitude" did not occur in 
his personal dictionary. Neither, to be quite fair, did he expect 
it from others. He was totally indifferent to human suffering. 
He executed prisoners of war (in Egypt in 1798) who had 
been promised their lives, and he quietly allowed his wounded 
in Syria to be chloroformed when he found it impossible to 
transport them to his ships. He ordered the Duke of Enghien 
to be condemned to death by a prejudiced court-martial and to 
be shot contrary to all law on the sole ground that the 
"Bourbons needed a warning." He decreed that those Ger- 
man officers who were made prisoner while fighting for their 
country's independence should be shot against the nearest wall, 
and when Andreas Hofer, the Tyrolese hero, fell into his hands 
after a most heroic resistance, he was executed like a common 
traitor. 

In short, when we study the character of the Emperor, we 
begin to understand those anxious British mothers who used 
to drive their children to bed with the threat that "Bonaparte, 
who ate little boys and girls for breakfast, would come and get 
them if they were not very good." And yet, having said these 
many unpleasant things about this strange tyrant, who looked 
after every other department of his army with the utmost care, 
but neglected the medical service, and who ruined his uniforms 



352 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

with Eau de Cologne because he could not stand the smell of 
his poor sweating soldiers; having said all these unpleasant 
things and being fully prepared to add many more, I must 
confess to a certain lurking feeling of doubt. 

Here I am sitting at a comfortable table loaded heavily 
with books, with one eye on my typewriter and the other on 
Licorice the cat, who has a great fondness for carbon paper, 
and I am telling you that the Emperor Napoleon was a most 
contemptible person. But should I happen to look out of 
the window, down upon Seventh Avenue, and should the end- 
less procession of trucks and carts come to a sudden halt, and 
should I hear the sound of the heavy drums and see the little 
man on his white horse in his old and much-worn green uni- 
form, then I don't know, but I am afraid that I would leave 
my books and the kitten and my home and everything else to 
follow him wherever he cared to lead. My own grandfather 
did this and Heaven knows he was not born to be a hero. 
Millions of other people's grandfathers did it. They re- 
ceived no reward, but they expected none. They cheerfully 
gave legs and arms and lives to serve this foreigner, who took 
them a thousand miles away from their homes and marched 
them into a barrage of Russian or English or Spanish or 
Italian or Austrian cannon and stared quietly into space while 
they were rolling in the agony of death. 

If you ask me for an explanation, I must answer that I 
have none. I can only guess at one of the reasons. Napoleon 
was the greatest of actors and the whole European conti- 
nent was his stage. At all times and under all circumstances 
he knew the precise attitude that would impress the spectators 
most and he understood what words would make the deepest 
impression. Whether he spoke in the Egyptian desert, before 
the backdrop of the Sphinx and the pyramids, or addressed 
his shivering men on the dew-soaked plains of Italy, made no 
difference. At all times he was master of the situation. Even 
at the end, an exile on a little rock in the middle of the Atlantic, 
a sick man at the mercy of a dull and intolerable British gov- 
ernor, he held the centre of the stage. 



NAPOLEON 353 

After the defeat of Waterloo, no one outside of a few 
trusted friends ever saw the great Emperor. The people of 
Europe knew that he was living on the island of St, Helena — 
they knew that a British garrison guarded him day and night 
— they knew that the British fleet guarded the garrison which 
guarded the Emperor on his farm at Longwood. But he was 
never out of the mind of either friend or enemy. When illness 
and despair had at last taken him away, his silent eyes contin- 
ued to haunt the world. Even to-day he is as much of a force 
in the life of France as a hundred years ago when people 
fainted at the mere sight of this sallow-faced man who stabled 
his horses in the holiest temples of the Russian Kremlin, and 
who treated the Pope and the mighty ones of this earth as if 
they were his lackeys. 

To give you a mere outline of his life would demand a 
couple of volumes. To tell you of his great political reform 
of the French state, of his new codes of laws which were 
adopted in most European countries, of his activities in every 
field of public activity, would take thousands of pages. But 
I can explain in a few words why he was so successful during 
the first part of his career and why he failed during the last 
ten years. From the year 1789 until the year 1804, Napoleon 
was the great leader of the French revolution. He was not 
merely fighting for the glory of his own name. He defeated 
Austria and Italy and England and Russia because he, him- 
self, and his soldiers were the apostles of the new creed of 
"Liberty, Fraternity and Equality" and were the enemies of 
the courts while they were the friends of the people. 

But in the year 1804, Napoleon made himself Hereditary 
Emperor of the French and sent for Pope Pius VII to come 
and crown him, even as Leo III, in the year 800 had crowned 
that other great King of the Franks, Charlemagne, whose ex- 
ample was constantly before Napoleon's eyes. 

Once upon the throne, the old revolutionary chieftain be- 
came an unsuccessful imitation of a Habsburg monarch. He 
forgot his spiritual INIother, the Political Club of the Jacobins. 
He ceased to be the defender of the oppressed. He became the 



354 THE STORY OF IVIANKIND 

chief of all the oppressors and kept his shooting squads ready 
to execute those who dared to oppose his imperial will. 'No 
one had shed a tear when in the year 1806 the sad remains of 
the Holy Roman Empire were carted to the historical dustbin 
and when the last relic of ancient Roman glory was destroyed 
by the grandson of an Italian peasant. But when the Napo- 
leonic armies had invaded Spain, had forced the Spaniards to 
recognise a king whom they detested, had massacred the poor 
Madrilenes who remained faithful to their old rulers, then 
public opinion turned against the former hero of INIarengo and 
Austerlitz and a hundred other revolutionary battles. Then 
and only then, when Napoleon was no longer the hero of the 
revolution but the personification of all the bad traits of the 
Old Regime, was it possible for England to give direction to 
the fast-spreading sentiment of hatred which was turning all 
honest men into enemies of the French Emperor. 

The English people from the very beginning had felt 
deeply disgusted when their newspapers told them the grue- 
some details of the Terror. They had staged their own great 
revolution (during the reign of Charles I) a century before. 
It had been a very simple affair compared to the upheaval of 
Paris. In the eyes of the average Englishman a Jacobin was 
a monster to be shot at sight and Napoleon was the Chief Devil. 
The British fleet had blockaded France ever since the year 
1798. It had spoiled Napoleon's plan to invade India by way 
of Egypt and had forced him to beat an ignominious retreat, 
after his victories along the banks of the Nile. And finally, 
in the year 1805, England got the chance it had waited for so 
long. 

Near Cape Trafalgar on the southwestern coast of Spain, 
Nelson annihilated the Napoleonic fleet, beyond a possible 
chance of recovery. From that moment on, the Emperor was 
landlocked. Even so, he would have been able to maintain 
himself as the recognised ruler of the continent had he under- 
stood the signs of the times and accepted the honourable peace 
which the powers offered him. But Napoleon had been blinded 
by the blaze of his own glory. He would recognise no equals. 



NAPOLEON 355 

He could tolerate no rivals. And his hatred turned against 
Russia, the mysterious land of the endless plains with its inex- 
haustible supply of cannon-fodder. 

As long as Russia was ruled by Paul I, the half-witted son 
of Catherine the Great, Napoleon had known how to deal with 
the situation. But Paul grew more and more irresponsible 
until his exasperated subjects were obliged to murder him, 
(lest they all be sent to the Siberian lead-mines) and the son of 









M&m^:,r. 



%'J:;'\Jf-:y':S:'i^.;-t.-~: 










THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW 

Paul, the Emperor Alexander, did not share his father's affec- 
tion for the usurper whom he regarded as the enemy of man- 
kind, the eternal disturber of the peace. He was a pious man 
who believed that he had been chosen by God to deliver the 
world from the Corsican curse. He joined Prussia and Eng- 
land and Austria and he was defeated. He tried five times 
and five times he failed. In the year 1812 he once more taunted 
Napoleon until the French Emperor, in a blind rage, vowed 
that he would dictate peace in Moscow. Then, from far and 
wide, from Spain and Germany and Holland and Italy and 
Portugal, unwilling regiments were driven northward, that the 



356 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

wounded pride of the great Emperor might be duly avenged. 

The rest of the story is common knowledge. After a march 
of two months, Napoleon reached the Russian capital and es- 
tablished his headquarters in the holy Kremlin. On the night 
of September 15 of the year 1812, Moscow caught fire. The 
town burned four days. When the evening of the fifth day 
came. Napoleon gave the order for the retreat. Two weeks 
later it began to snow. The army trudged through mud and 
sleet until November the 26th when the river Berezina was 
reached. Then the Russian attacks began in all seriousness. 
The Cossacks swarmed around the "Grande Armee" which 
was no longer an army but a mob. In the middle of December 
the first of the survivors began to be seen in the German cities 
of the East. 

Then there were many rumours of an impending revolt. 
"The time has come," the people of Europe said, "to free our- 
selves from this insufferable yoke." And they began to look 
for old shotguns which had escaped the eye of the ever-present 
French spies. But ere they knew what had happened, Napo- 
leon was back with a new army. He had left his defeated sol- 
diers and in his little sleigh had rushed ahead to Paris, making 
a final appeal for more troops that he might defend the sacred 
soil of France against foreign invasion. 

Children of sixteen and seventeen followed him when he 
moved eastward to meet the allied powers. On October 16, 
18, and 19 of the year 1813, the terrible battle of Leipzig took 
place where for three days boys in green and boys in blue 
fought each other until the Elbe ran red with blood. On the 
afternoon of the 17th of October, the massed reserves of Rus- 
sian infantry broke through the French lines and Napoleon 
fled. 

Back to Paris he went. He abdicated in favour of his small 
son, but the allied powers insisted that Louis XVIII, the 
brother of the late king Louis XVI, should occupy the French 
throne, and surrounded by Cossacks and Uhlans, the dull-eyed 
Bourbon prince made his triumphal entry into Paris. 

As for Napoleon, he was made the sovereign ruler of the 



NAPOLEON 357 

little island of Elba in the Mediterranean where he organised 
his stable boys into a miniature army and fought battles on a 
chess board. 

But no sooner had he left France than the people began 
to realise what they had lost. The last twenty years, however 
costly, had been a period of great glory. Paris had been the 
capital of the world. The fat Bourbon king who had learned 
nothing and had forgotten nothing during the days of his 
exile disgusted everybody by his indolence. 

On the first of March of the year 1815, when the repre- 
sentatives of the allies were ready to begin the work of unscram- 
bling the map of Europe, Napoleon suddenly landed near 
Cannes. In less than a week the French army had deserted 
the Bourbons and had rushed southward to offer their swords 
and bayonets to the "little Corporal." Napoleon marched 
straight to Paris where he arrived on the twentieth of March. 
This time he was more cautious. He offered peace, but the 
allies insisted upon war. The whole of Europe arose against 
the "perfidious Corsican." Rapidly the Emperor marched 
northward that he might crush his enemies before they should 
be able to unite their forces. But Napoleon was no longer his 
old self. He felt sick. He got tired easily. He slept when he 
ought to have been up directing the attack of his advance- 
guard. Besides, he missed many of his faithful old generals. 
They were dead. 

Early in June his armies entered Belgium. On the 16th 
of that month he defeated the Prussians under Bliicher. But 
a subordinate commander failed to destroy the retreating army 
as he had been ordered to do. 

Two days later, Napoleon met Wellington near Waterloo. 
It was the 18th of June, a Sunday. At two o'clock of the 
afternoon, the battle seemed won for the French. At tliree a 
speck of dust appeared upon the eastern horizon. Napoleon 
believed that this meant the approach of his own cavalry who 
would now turn the English defeat into a rout. At four o'clock 
he knew better. Cursing and swearing, old Bliicher drove 
his deathly tired troops into the heart of the fray. The shock 



358 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



broke the ranks of the guards. Napoleon had no further re- 
serves. He told his men to save themselves as best they could, 
and he fled. 

For a second time, he abdicated in favor of his son. Just 
one hundred days after his escape from Elba, he was making 
for the coast. He intended to go to America. In the year 
1803, for a mere song, he had sold the French colony of 




iUATeiit.oo' 






■'■t./Af^T^jv Me4. 
His c»»va,£ ^c>t 



^' 





'— \ 

J^0At0 <« <^»Tmm Bha^ 



THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO 



Louisiana (which was in great danger of being captured by 
the English,) to the young American Republic. "The Ameri- 
cans," so he said, "will be grateful and will give me a little bit 
of land and a house where I may spend the last days of my life 
in peace and quiet." But the English fleet was watching all 
French harbours. Caught between the armies of the Allies 
and the ships of the British, Napoleon had no choice. The 
Prussians intended to shoot him. The Enghsh might be more 



NAPOLEON 



359 



generous. At Rochefort he waited in the hope that something 
might turn up. One month after Waterloo, he received orders 
from the new French government to leave French soil inside 
of twenty-four hours. Always the tragedian, he wrote a letter 
to the Prince Regent of England (George IV, the king, was 
in an insane asylum) informing His Royal Highness of his 
intention to "throw himself upon the mercy of his enemies and 
like Themistocles, to look for a welcome at the fireside of his 
foes ..." 




NAPOLEON GOES INTO EXILE 



On the 15th of July he went on board the "Bellerophon" 
and surrendered his sword to Admiral Hotham. At Plymouth 
he was transferred to the "Northumberland" which carried him 
to St. Helena. There he spent the last seven years of his 
life. He tried to write his memoirs, he quarrelled with his 
keepers and he dreamed of past times. Curiously enough he 
returned (at least in his imagination) to his original point of 
departure. He remembered the days when he had fought the 
battles of the Revolution. He tried to convince himslf that 
he had always been the true friend of those great principles of 
"Liberty, Fraternity and Equality" which the ragged soldiers 
of the convention had carried to the ends of the earth. He 
liked to dwell upon his career as Commander-in-Chief and 
Consul. He rarely spoke of the Empire. Sometimes he 



360 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

thought of his son, the Duke of Reichstadt, the little eagle, 
who lived in Vienna, where he was treated as a "poor relation" 
by his young Habsburg cousins, whose fathers had trembled at 
the very mention of the name of Him. When the end came, 
he was leading his troops to victory. He ordered Ney to attack 
with the guards. Then he died. 

But if you want an explanation of this strange career, if 
you really wish to know how one man could possibly rule so 
many people for so many years by the sheer force of his will, 
do not read the books that have been written about him. Their 
authors either hated the Emperor or loved him. You will 
learn many facts, but it is more important to "feel history" 
than to know it. Don't read, but wait until you have a chance 
to hear a good artist sing the song called "The Two Grena- 
diers." The words were written by Heine, the great German 
poet who lived through the Napoleonic era. The music was 
composed by Schubert, an Austrian who saw the Emperor, 
the enemy of his country, whenever he came to visit his im- 
perial father-in-law. The song therefore is the work of two 
men who had every reason to hate the tyrant. 

Go and hear it. Then you will understand what a thousand 
volumes could not possibly tell you. 



THE HOLY ALLIANCE 



AS SOON AS NAPOLEON HAD BEEN SENT TO 
ST. HELENA THE RULERS WHO SO OFTEN 
HAD BEEN DEFEATED BY THE HATED 
"CORSICAN" MET AT VIENNA AND TRIED 
TO UNDO THE MANY CHANGES THAT HAD 
BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE FRENCH 
REVOLUTION 

The Imperial Highnesses, the Royal Highnesses, their 
Graces the Dukes, the Ministers Extraordinary and Plenipo- 
tentiary, together with the plain Excellencies and their army 
of secretaries, servants and hangers-on, whose labours had 
been so rudely interrupted by the sudden return of the terrible 
Corsican (now sweltering under the hot sun of St. Helena) 
went back to their jobs. The victory was duly celebrated with 
dinners, garden parties and balls at which the new and very 
shocking "waltz" was danced to the great scandal of the ladies 
and gentlemen who remembered the minuet of the old Regime. 

For almost a generation they had lived in retirement. At 
last the danger was over. They were very eloquent upon the 
subject of the terrible hardships which they had suffered. 
And they expected to be recompensed for every penny they 
had lost at the hands of the unspeakable Jacobins who had 
dared to kill their anointed king, who had abolished wigs and 
who had discarded the short trousers of the court of Versailles 
for the ragged pantaloons of the Parisian slums. 

361 



362 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

You may think it absurd that I should mention such a 
detail. But, if you please, the Congress of Vienna was one 
long succession of suc-h absurdities and for many months the 
question of "short trousers vs. long trousers" interested the 
delegates more than the future settlement of the Saxon or 
Spanish problems. His Majesty the King of Prussia went so 
far as to order a pair of short ones, that he might give public 
evidence of his contempt for everything revolutionary. 

Another German potentate, not to be outdone in this noble 
hatred for the revolution, decreed that all taxes which his sub- 
jects had paid to the French usurper should be paid a second 
time to the legitimate ruler who had loved his people from afar 
while they were at the mercy of the Corsican ogre. And so on. 
From one blunder to another, until one gasps and exclaims 
"but why in the name of High Heaven did not the people 
object?" Why not indeed? Because the people were utterly 
exhausted, were desperate, did not care what happened or how 
or where or by whom they were ruled, provided there was 
peace. They were sick and tired of war and revolution and 
reform. 

In the eighties of the previous century they had all danced 
around the tree of liberty. Princes had embraced their cooks 
and Duchesses had danced the Carmagnole with their lackeys 
in the honest belief that the Millennium of Equality and Fra- 
ternity had at last dawned upon this wicked world. Instead of 
the Millennium they had been visited by the Revolutionary com- 
missary who had lodged a dozen dirty soldiers in their parlor 
and had stolen the family plate when he returned to Paris to 
report to his government upon the enthusiasm with which the 
"liberated country" had received the Constitution, which the 
French people had presented to their good neighbours. 

When they had heard how the last outbreak of revolutionary 
disorder in Paris had been suppressed by a young officer, called 
Bonaparte, or Buonaparte, who had turned his guns upon the 
mob, they gave a sigh of relief. A little less liberty, fraternity 
and equality seemed a very desirable thing. But ere long, the 
young officer called Buonaparte or Bonaparte became one of 




OFF FOR TRAFALGAR 



THE HOLY ALLIANCE 363 

the three consuls of the French Republic, then sole consul and 
finally Emperor. As he was much more efficient than any 
ruler that had ever been seen before, his hand pressed heavily 
upon his poor subjects. He showed them no mercy. He im- 
pressed their sons into his armies, he married their daughters 
to his generals and he took their pictures and their statues to 
enrich his own museums. He turned the whole of Europe 
into an armed camp and killed almost an entire generation of 
men. 

Now he was gone, and the people (except a few professional 
military men) had but one wish. They wanted to be let alone. 
For av»^hile they had been allowed to rule themselves, to vote 
for mayors and aldermen and judges. The system had been a 
terrible failure. The new rulers had been inexperienced and 
extravagant. From sheer despair the people turned to the 
representative men of the old Regime. "You rule us," they 
said, "as you used to do. Tell us what we owe you for taxes 
and leave us alone. We are busy repairing the damage of the 
age of liberty." 

The men who stage-managed the famous congress cer- 
tainly did their best to satisfy this longing for rest and quiet. 
The Holy Alliance, the main result of the Congress, made the 
policeman the most important dignitary of the State and held 
out the most terrible punishment to those who dared criticise a 
single official act. 

Europe had peace, but it was the peace of the cemetery. 

The three most important men at Vienna were the Em- 
peror Alexander of Russia, Mettemich, who represented the 
interests of the Austrian house of Habsburg, and Talleyrand, 
the erstwhile bishop of Autun, who had managed to live 
through the different changes in the French government by 
the sheer force of his cunning and his intelligence and who 
now travelled to the Austrian capital to save for his country 
whatever could be saved from the Napoleonic ruin. Like the 
gay young man of the limerick, who never knew when he was 
slighted, this unbidden guest came to the party and ate just as 
heartily as if he had been really invited. Indeed, before long, 



364 



THE STORY OF MIANKIND 




THE SPECTRE WHICH FRIGHTENED THE HOLY ALLIANCE 



THE HOLY ALLIANCE 365 

he was sitting at the head of the table entertaining everybody 
with his amusing stories and gaining the company's good will 
by the charm of his manner. 

Before he had been in Vienna twenty-four hours he knew 
that the allies were divided into two hostile camps. On the 
one side were Russia, who wanted to take Poland, and Prussia, 
who wanted to annex Saxony; and on the other side were 
Austria and England, who were trying to prevent this grab 
because it was against their own interest that either Prussia or 
Russia should be able to dominate Europe. Talleyrand played 
the two sides against each other with great skill and it was due 
to his efforts that the French people were not made to suffer 
for the ten years of oppression which Europe had endured at 
the hands of the Imperial officials. He argued that the French 
people had been given no choice in the matter. Napoleon had 
forced them to act at his bidding. But Napoleon was gone and 
Louis XVIII was on the throne. "Give him a chance," Talley- 
rand pleaded. And the Allies, glad to see a legitimate king 
upon the throne of a revolutionary country, obligingly yielded 
and the Bourbons were given their chance, of which they 
made such use that they were driven out after fifteen years. 

The second man of the triumvirate of Vienna was Metter- 
nich, the Austrian prime-minister, the leader of the foreign 
policy of the house of Habsburg. Wenzel Lothar, Prince of 
Metternich-Winneburg, was exactly what the name suggests. 
He was a Grand Seigneur, a very handsome gentleman with 
very fine manners, immensely rich, and very able, but the 
product of a society which lived a thousand miles away from 
the sweating multitudes who worked and slaved in the cities 
and on the farms. As a young man, Metternich had been 
studying at the University of Strassburg when the French 
Revolution broke out. Strassburg, the city which gave birth 
to the Marseillaise, had been a centre of Jacobin activities. 
Metternich remembered that his pleasant social life had been 
sadly interrupted, that a lot of incompetent citizens had sud- 
denly been called forth to perform tasks for which they were 
not fit, that the mob had celebrated the dawn of the new liberty 



366 THE STORY OF IVIANKIND 

by the murder of perfectly innocent persons. He had failed to 
see the honest enthusiasm of the masses, the ray of hope in the 
eyes of women and children who carried bread and water to 
the ragged troops of the Convention, marching through the 
city on their way to the front and a glorious death for the 
French Fatherland. 

The whole thing had filled the young Austrian with disgust. 
It was uncivilised. If there were any fighting to be done it 
must be done by dashing young men in lovely uniforms, charg- 
ing across the green fields on well-groomed horses. But to 
turn an entire country into an evil-smelling armed camp where 
tramps were overnight promoted to be generals, that was both 
wicked and senseless. "See what came of all your fine ideas," 
he would say to the French diplomats whom he met at a quiet 
little dinner given by one of the innumerable Austrian grand- 
dukes. "You wanted liberty, equality and fraternity and you 
got Napoleon. How much better it would have been if you 
had been contented with the existing order of things." And 
he would explain his system of "stability." He would advo- 
cate a return to the normalcy of the good old days before the 
war, when everybody was happy and nobody talked nonsense 
about "everybody being as good as everybody else." In this 
attitude he was entirely sincere and as he was an able man of 
great strength of will and a tremendous power of persuasion, 
he was one of the most dangerous enemies of the Revolutionary 
ideas. He did not die until the year 1859, and he therefore 
lived long enough to see the complete failure of all his policies 
when they were swept aside by the revolution of the year 1848. 
He then found himself the most hated man of Europe and 
more than once ran the risk of being lynched by angry crowds 
of outraged citizens. But until the very last, he remained stead- 
fast in his belief that he had done the right thing. 

He had always been convinced that people preferred peace 
to liberty and he had tried to give them what was best for them. 
And in all fairness, it ought to be said that his efforts to estab- 
lish universal peace were fairly successful. The great powers 
did not fly at each other's throat for almost forty years, indeed 



THE HOLY ALLIANCE 



367 



not until the Crimean war between Russia and England, 
France and Italy and Turkey, in the year 1854. That means 
a record for the European continent. 

The third hero of this waltzing congress was the Emperor 
Alexander. He had been brought up at the court of his grand- 




THE REAL CONGRESS OF VIENNA 



mother, the famous Catherine the Great. Between the lessons 
of this shrewd old woman, who taught him to regard the glory 
of Russia as the most important thing in life, and those of his 
private tutor, a Swiss admirer of Voltaire and Rousseau, who 
filled his mind with a general love of humanity, the boy grew 
up to be a strange mixture of a selfish tyrant and a sentimental 
revolutionist. He had suffered great indignities during the 
life of his crazy father, Paul I. He had been obliged to wit- 



368 THE STORY OF MIANKIND 

ness the wholesale slaughter of the Napoleonic battle-fields. 
Then the tide had turned. His armies had won the day for the 
Alhes. Russia had become the saviour of Europe and the Tsar 
of this mighty people was acclaimed as a half -god who would 
cure the world of its many ills. 

But Alexander was not very clever. He did not know 
men and women as Talleyrand and Metternich knew them. 
He did not understand the strange game of diplomacy. He 
was vain (who would not be under the circumstances?) and 
loved to hear the applause of the multitude and soon he had 
become the main "attraction" of the Congress while JNIetter- 
nich and Talleyrand and Castlereagh (the very able British 
representative) sat around a table and drank a bottle of Tokay 
and decided what was actually going to be done. They needed 
Russia and therefore they were very polite to Alexander, but 
the less he had personally to do with the actual work of the 
Congress, the better they were pleased. They even encouraged 
his plans for a Holy Alliance that he might be fully occupied 
while they were engaged upon the work at hand. 

Alexander was a sociable person who liked to go to parties 
and meet people. Upon such occasions he was happy and gay 
but there was a very different element in his character. He 
tried to forget something which he could not forget. On the 
night of the 23rd of March of the year 1801 he had been sitting 
in a room of the St. Michael Palace in Petersburg, waiting for 
the news of his father's abdication. But Paul had refused to 
sign the document which the drunken officers had placed be- 
fore him on the table, and in their rage they had put a scarf 
around his neck and had strangled him to death. Then they 
had gone downstairs to tell Alexander that he was Emperor of 
all the Russian lands. 

The memory of this terrible night stayed with the Tsar 
who was a very sensitive person. He had been educated in 
the school of the great French philosophers who did not be- 
lieve in God but in Human Reason. But Reason alone could 
not satisfy the Emperor in his predicament. He began to 
hear voices and see things. He tried to find a way by which 



THE HOLY ALLIANCE 369 

he could square himself with his conscience. He became very 
pious and began to take an interest in mysticism, that strange 
love of the mysterious and the unknown which is as old as the 
temples of Thebes and Babylon. 

The tremendous emotion of the great revolutionary era 
had influenced the character of the people of that day in a 
strange way. Men and women who had lived through twenty 
years of anxiety and fear were no longer quite normal. They 
jumped whenever the door-bell rang. It might mean the news 
of the "death on the field of honour" of an only son. The 
phrases about "brotherly love" and "liberty" of the Revolu- 
tion were hollow words in the ears of sorely stricken peasants. 
They clung to anything that might give them a new hold on 
the terrible problems of life. In their grief and misery they 
were easily imposed upon by a large number of imposters 
who posed as prophets and preached a strange new doctrine 
which they dug out of the more obscure passages of the Book 
of Revelations. 

In the year 1814, Alexander, who had already consulted a 
large number of wonder-doctors, heard of a new seeress who 
was foretelling the coming doom of the world and was exhort- 
ing people to repent ere it be too late. The Baroness von 
Kriidener, the lady in question, was a Russian woman of uncer- 
tain age and similar reputation who had been the wife of a 
Russian diplomat in the days of the Emperor Paul. She had 
squandered her husband's money and had disgraced him by 
her strange love affairs. She had lived a very dissolute life 
until her nerves had given way and for a while she was not in 
her right mind. Then she had been converted by the sight of 
the sudden death of a friend. Thereafter she despised all 
gaiety. She confessed her former sins to her shoemaker, a 
pious Moravian brother, a follower of the old reformer John 
Huss, who had been burned for his heresies by the Council of 
Constance in the year 1415. 

The next ten years the Baroness spent in Germany making 
a specialty of the "conversion" of kings and princes. To con- 
vince Alexander, the Saviour of Europe, of the error of his 



370 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

ways was the greatest ambition of her hfe. And as Alexander, 
in his misery, was willing to Hsten to anybody who brought him 
a ray of hope, the interview was easily arranged. On the eve- 
ning of the fourth of June of the year 1815, she was admitted 
to the tent of the Emperor. She found him reading his Bible. 
We do not know what she said to Alexander, but when she 
left him three hours later, he was bathed in tears, and vowed 
that "at last his soul had found peace." From that day on the 
Baroness was his faithful companion and his spiritual adviser. 
She followed him to Paris and then to Vienna and the time 
which Alexander did not spend dancing he spent at the 
Kriidener prayer-meetings. 

You may ask why I tell you this story in such great detail? 
Are not the social changes of the nineteenth century of greater 
importance than the career of an ill-balanced woman who had 
better be forgotten? Of course they are, but there exist any 
number of books which will tell you of these other things with 
great accuracy and in great detail. I want you to learn some- 
thing more from this history than a mere succession of facts. 
I want you to approach all historical events in a frame of mind 
that will take nothing for granted. Don't be satisfied with 
the mere statement that "such and such a thing happened then 
and there." Try to discover the hidden motives behind every 
action and then you will understand the world around you 
much better and you will have a greater chance to help others, 
which (when all is said and done) is the only truly satisfac- 
tory way of living. 

I do not want you to think of the Holy Alliance as a piece 
of paper which was signed in the year 1815 and lies dead and 
forgotten somewhere in the archives of state. It may be for- 
gotten but it is by no means dead. The Holy Alliance was 
directly responsible for the promulgation of the INIonroe 
Doctrine, and the Monroe Doctrine of America for the Ameri- 
cans has a very distinct bearing upon your own life. That is 
the reason why I want you to know exactly how this document 
happened to come into existence and what the real motives were 



THE HOLY ALLIANCE 371 

underlying this outward manifestation of piety and Christian 
devotion to duty. 

The Holy Alliance was the joint labour of an unfortunate 
man who had suffered a terrible mental shock and who was 
trying to pacify his much-disturbed soul, and of an ambitious 
woman who after a wasted life had lost her beauty and her 
attraction and who satisfied her vanity and her desire for noto- 
riety by assuming the role of self-appointed Messiah of a 
new and strange creed. I am not giving away any secrets 
when I tell you these details. Such sober minded people as 
Castlereagh, Metternich and Talleyrand fully understood 
the limited abilities of the sentimental Baroness. It would have 
been easy for Metternich to send her back to her German 
estates. A few lines to the almighty commander of the imperial 
police and the thing was done. 

But France and England and Austria depended upon the 
good- will of Russia. They could not afford to offend Alex- 
ander. And they tolerated the silly old Baroness because they 
had to. And while they regarded the Holy Alliance as utter 
rubbish and not worth the paper upon which it was written, 
they listened patiently to the Tsar when he read them the first 
rough draft of this attempt to create the Brotherhood of Men 
upon a basis of the Holy Scriptures. For this is what the 
Holy Alliance tried to do, and the signers of the document 
solemnly declared that they would "in the administration of 
their respective states and in their pohtical relations with every 
other government take for their sole guide the precepts of that 
Holy Religion, namely the precepts of Justice, Christian 
Charity and Peace, which far from being applicable only to 
private concerns must have an immediate influence on the 
councils of princes, and must guide all their steps as being the 
only means of consolidating human institutions and remedying 
their imperfections." They then proceeded to promise each 
other that they would remain united "by the bonds of a true 
and indissoluble fraternity, and considering each other as 
fellow-countrymen, they would on all occasions and in all places 



372 THE STORY OF MIANKIND 

lend each other aid and assistance." And more words to the 
same effect. 

Eventually the Holy Alliance was signed by the Emperor 
of Austria, who did not understand a word of it. It was signed 
by the Bourbons who needed the friendship of Napoleon's old 
enemies. It was signed by the King of Prussia, who hoped to 
gain Alexander for his plans for a "greater Prussia," and by 
all the little nations of Europe who were at the mercy of Rus- 
sia. England never signed, because Castlereagh thought the 
whole thing buncombe. The Pope did not sign because he 
resented this interference in his business by a Greek-Orthodox 
and a Protestant. And the Sultan did not sign because he 
never heard of it. 

The general mass of the European people, however, soon 
were forced to take notice. Behind the hollow phrases of the 
Holy Alliance stood the armies of the Quintuple Alliance 
which Metternich had created among the great powers. These 
armies meant business. They let it be known that the peace 
of Europe must not be disturbed by the so-called liberals who 
were in reality nothing but disguised Jacobins, and hoped for 
a return of the revolutionary days. The enthusiasm for the 
great wars of liberation of the years 1812, 1813, 1814 and 
1815 had begun to wear off. It had been followed by a sincere 
belief in the coming of a happier day. The soldiers who had 
borne the brunt of the battle wanted peace and they said so. 

But they did not want the sort of peace which the Holy 
Alliance and the Council of the European powers had now 
bestowed upon them. They cried that they had been betrayed. 
But they were careful lest they be heard by a secret-police spy. 
The reaction was victorious. It was a reaction caused by men 
who sincerely believed that their methods were necessary for 
the good of humanity. But it was just as hard to bear as if 
their intentions had been less kind. And it caused a great deal 
of unnecessary suffering and greatly retarded the orderly 
progress of political development. 




THEY TRIED TO ASSURE THE WORLD AN ERA 
OF UNDISTURBED PEACE BY SUPPRESS- 
ING ALL NEW IDEAS. THEY MADE THE 
POLICE-SPY THE HIGHEST FUNCTIONARY 
IN THE STATE AND SOON THE PRISONS 
OF ALL COUNTRIES WERE FILLED WITH 
THOSE WHO CLAIMED THAT PEOPLE 
HAVE THE RIGHT TO GOVERN THEM- 
SELVES AS THEY SEE FIT 

To undo the damage done by the great Napoleonic flood 
was almost impossible. Age-old fences had been washed away. 
The palaces of two score dynasties had been damaged to such 
an extent that they had to be condemned as uninhabitable. 
Other royal residences had been greatly enlarged at the ex- 
pense of less fortunate neighbours. Strange odds and ends 
of revolutionary doctrine had been left behind by the receding 
waters and could not be dislodged without danger to the entire 
community. But the political engineers of the Congress did 
the best they could and this is what they accomplished. 

France had disturbed the peace of the world for so many 
years that people had come to fear that country almost in- 
stinctively. The Bourbons, through the mouth of Talleyrand, 
had promised to be good, but the Hundred Days had taught 
Europe what to expect should Napoleon manage to escape for 
a second time. The Dutch Republic, therefore, was changed 

373 



374 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

into a Kingdom, and Belgium (which had not joined the Dutch 
struggle for independence in the sixteenth century and since 
then had been part of the Habsburg domains, first under Span- 
ish rule and thereafter under Austrian rule) was made part 
of this new kingdom of the Netherlands. Nobody wanted this 
union either in the Protestant North or in the Catholic South, 
but no questions were asked. It seemed good for the peace 
of Europe and that was the main consideration. 

Poland had hoped for great things because a Pole, Prince 
Adam Czartoryski, was one of the most intimate friends of 
Tsar Alexander and had been his constant advisor during the 
war and at the Congress of Vienna. But Poland was made a 
semi-independent part of Russia with Alexander as her king. 
This solution pleased no one and caused much bitter feeling 
and three revolutions. 

Denmark, which had remained a faithful ally of Napoleon 
until the end, was severely punished. Seven years before, an 
English fleet had sailed down the Kattegat and without a 
declaration of war or any warning had bombarded Copenhagen 
and had taken away the Danish fleet, lest it be of value to 
Napoleon. The Congress of Vienna went one step further. 
It took Norway (which since the union of Calmar of the year 
1397 had been united with Denmark) away from Denmark 
and gave it to Charles XXII of Sweden as a reward for his 
betrayal of Napoleon, who had set him up in the king business. 
This Swedish king, curiously enough, was a former French 
general by the name of Bernadotte, who had come to Sweden 
as one of Napoleon's adjutants, and had married a daughter 
of the last Swedish king of the house of Hollstein-Gottorp. 
From 1815 until 1844 he ruled his adopted country (the lan- 
guage of which he never learned) with great ability. He was 
a clever man and enjoyed the respect of both his Swedish and 
his Norwegian subjects, but he did not succeed in joining two 
countries which nature and history had put asunder. The dual 
Scandinavian state was never a success and in the year 1905, 
Norway, in a most peaceful and orderly manner, set up as an 



THE GREAT REACTION 375 

independent kingdom and the Swedes bade her "good speed" 
and very wisely let her go her own way. 

The Italians, who since the days of the Renaissance had 
been at the mercy of a long series of invaders, also had put 
great hopes in General Bonaparte. The Emperor Napoleon, 
however, had grievously disappointed them. Instead of the 
United Italy which the people wanted, they had been divided 
into a number of little principalities, duchies, republics and 
the Papal State, which (next to Naples) was the worst gov- 
erned and most miserable region of the entire peninsula. The 
Congress of Vienna abolished a few of the Napoleonic repub- 
lics and in their place resurrected several old principalities 
which were given to deserving members, both male and female, 
of the Habsburg family. 

The poor Spaniards, who had started the great nationalistic 
revolt against Napoleon, and who had sacrificed the best blood 
of the country for their king, were punished severely when the 
Congress allowed His Majesty to return to his domains. This 
vicious creature, known as Ferdinand VII, had spent the last 
four years of his life as a prisoner of Napoleon. He had im- 
proved his days by knitting garments for the statues of his 
favourite patron saints. He celebrated h:s return by re-intro- 
ducing the Inquisition and the torture-chamber, both of which 
had been abolished by the Revolution. He was a disgusting 
person, despised as much by his subjects as by his four wives, 
but the Holy Alliance maintained him upon his legitimate 
throne and all efforts of the decent Spaniards to get rid of this 
curse and make Spain a constitutional kingdom ended in 
bloodshed and executions. 

Portugal had been without a king since the year 1807 when 
the royal family had fled to the colonies in Brazil, The coun- 
try had been used as a base of supply for the armies of 
Wellington during the Peninsula war, which lasted from 1808 
until 1814. After 1815 Portugal continued to be a sort of 
British province until the house of Braganza returned to the 
throne, leaving one of its members behind in Rio de Janeiro 
as Emperor of Brazil, the only American Empire which lasted 



376 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

for more than a few years, and which came to an end in 1889 
when the country became a republic. 

In the east, nothing was done to improve the terrible con- 
ditions of both the Slavs and the Greeks who were still subjects 
of the Sultan. In the year 1804 Black George, a Servian 
swineherd, (the founder of the Karageorgevich dynasty) had 
started a revolt against the Turks, but he had been defeated 
by his enemies and had been murdered by one of his supposed 
friends, the rival Servian leader, called Milosh Obrenovich, 
(who became the founder of the Obrenovich dynasty,) and the 
Turks had continued to be the undisputed masters of the 
Balkans. 

The Greeks, who since the loss of their independence, two 
thousand years before, had been subjects of the Macedonians, 
the Romans, the Venetians and the Turks, had hoped that their 
countryman. Capo d'Istria, a native of Corfu and together 
with Czartoryski, the most intimate personal friends of 
Alexander, would do something for them. But the Congress 
of Vienna was not interested in Greeks, but was very much 
interested in keeping all "legitimate" monarchs, Christian, 
Moslem and otherwise, upon their respective thrones. There- 
fore nothing was done. 

The last, but perhaps the greatest blunder of the Congress 
was the treatment of Germany. The Reformation and the 
Thirty Years War had not only destroyed the prosperity of the 
country, but had turned it into a hopeless political rubbish 
heap, consisting of a couple of kingdoms, a few grand-duchies, 
a large number of duchies and hundreds of margravates, prin- 
cipalities, baronies, electorates, free cities and free villages, 
ruled by the strangest assortment of potentates that was ever 
seen off the comic opera stage. Frederick the Great had 
changed this when he created a strong Prussia, but this state 
had not survived him by many years. 

Napoleon had blue-penciled the demand for independence 
of most of these little countries, and only fifty-two out of a 
total of more than three hundred had survived the year 1806. 
During the years of the great struggle for independence, many 



THE GREAT REACTION 377 

a young soldier had dreamed of a new Fatherland that should 
be strong and united. But there can be no union without a 
strong leadership, and who was to be this leader? 

There were five kingdoms in the German speaking lands. 
The rulers of two of these, Austria and Prussia, were kings by 
the Grace of God. The rulers of three others, Bavaria, Saxony 
and Wurtemberg, were kings by the Grace of Napoleon, and 
as they had been the faithful henchmen of the Emperor, their 
patriotic credit with the other Germans was therefore not very 
good. 

The Congress had established a new German Confedera- 
tion, a league of thirty-eight sovereign states, under the chair- 
manship of the King of Austria, who was now known as the 
Emperor of Austria. It was the sort of make-shift arrange- 
ment which satisfied no one. It is true that a German Diet, 
which met in the old coronation city of Frankfort, had been 
created to discuss matters of "common policy and importance." 
But in this Diet, thirty-eight delegates represented thirty-eight 
different interests and as no decision could be taken without a 
unanimous vote, (a parliamentary rule which had in previous 
centuries ruined the mighty kingdom of Poland), the famous 
German Confederation became very soon the laughing stock 
of Europe and the politics of the old Empire began to resemble 
those of our Central American neighbours in the forties and 
the fifties of the last century. 

It was terribly humiliating to the people who had sacrificed 
everything for a national ideal. But the Congress was not 
interested in the private feelings of "subjects," and the debate 
was closed. 

Did anybody object? Most assuredly. As soon as the first 
feeling of hatred against Napoleon had quieted down — as soon 
as the enthusiasm of the great war had subsided — as soon as 
the people came to a full realisation of the crime that had been 
committed in the name of "peace and stability" they began to 
murmur. They even made threats of open revolt. But what 
could they do ? They were powerless. They were at the mercy 



878 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

of the most pitiless and efficient police system the world had 
ever seen. 

The members of the Congress of Vienna, honestly and sin- 
cerely believed that "the Revolutionary Principle had led to 
the criminal usurpation of the throne by the former emperor 
Napoleon." They felt that they were called upon to eradicate 
the adherents of the so-called "French ideas" just as Philip II 
had only followed the voice of his conscience when he burned 
Protestants or hanged Moors. In the beginning of the six- 
teenth century a man who did not believe in the divine right 
of the Pope to rule his subjects as he saw fit was a "heretic" 
and it was the duty of all loyal citizens to kill him. In the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, on the continent of Eu- 
rope, a man who did not believe in the divine right of his king to 
rule him as he or his Prime Minister saw fit, was a "heretic," and 
it was the duty of all loyal citizens to denounce him to the near- 
est pohceman and see that he got punished. 

But the rulers of the year 1815 had learned efficiency in 
the school of Napoleon and they performed their task much 
better than it had been done in the year 1517. The period 
between the year 1815 and the year 1860 was the great era of 
the political spy. Spies were everywhere. They lived in pal- 
aces and they were to be found in the lowest gin-shops. They 
peeped through the key-holes of the ministerial cabinet and 
they listened to the conversations of the people who were taking 
the air on the benches of the Municipal Park. They guarded 
the frontier so that no one might leave without a duly viseed 
passport and they inspected all packages, that no books with 
dangerous "French ideas" should enter the realm of their 
Royal masters. They sat among the students in the lecture 
hall and woe to the Professor who uttered a word against the 
existing order of things. They followed the little boys and 
girls on their way to church lest they play hookey. 

In many of these tasks they were assisted by the clergy. 
The church had suffered greatly during the days of the revolu- 
tion. The church property had been confiscated. Several 
priests had been killed and the generation that had learned its 



THE GREAT REACTION 379 

cathechism from Voltaire and Rousseau and the other French 
philosophers had danced around the Altar of Reason when 
the Committee of Public Safety had abolished the worship of 
God in October of the year 1793. The priests had followed the 
"emigres" into their long exile. Now they returned in the 
wake of the allied armies and they set to work with a ven- 
geance. 

Even the Jesuits came back in 1814 and resumed their 
former labours of educating the young. Their order had been 
a little too successful in its fight against the enemies of the 
church. It had established "provinces" in every part of the 
world, to teach the natives the blessings of Christianity, but 
soon it had developed into a regular trading company which 
was for ever interfering with the civil authorities. During the 
reign of the Marquis de Pombal, the great reforming minister 
of Portugal, they had been driven out of the Portuguese lands 
and in the year 1773 at the request of most of the Catholic 
powers of Europe, the order had been suppressed by Pope 
Clement XIV. Now they were back on the job, and preached 
the principles of "obedience" and "love for the legitimate dyn- 
asty" to children whose parents had hired shopwindows that 
they might laugh at Marie Antoinette driving to the scaffold 
which was to end her misery. 

But in the Protestant countries like Prussia, things were 
not a whit better. The great patriotic leaders of the year 1812, 
the poets and the writers who had preached a holy war upon the 
usurper, were now branded as dangerous "demagogues." Their 
houses were searched. Their letters were read. They were 
obliged to report to the police at regular intervals and give an 
account of themselves. The Prussian drill master was let loose 
in all his fury upon the younger generation. When a party of 
students celebrated the tercentenary of the Reformation with 
noisy but harmless festivities on the old Wartburg, the Prus- 
sian beaurocrats had visions of an imminent revolution. When 
a theological student, more honest than intelligent, killed a 
Russian government spy who was operating in Germany, the 



380 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

universities were placed under police-supervision and profes- 
sors were jailed or dismissed without any form of trial. 

Russia, of course, was even more absurd in these anti-revo- 
lutionary activities. Alexander had recovered from his attack 
of piety. He was gradually drifting toward melancholia. He 
well knew his own limited abilities and understood how at 
Vienna he had been the victim both of Metternich and the 
Kriidener woman. More and more he turned his back upon the 
west and became a truly Russian ruler whose interests lay in 
Constantinople, the old holy city that had been the first teacher 
of the Slavs. The older he grew, the harder he worked and the 
less he was able to accomplish. And while he sat in his study, 
his ministers turned the whole of Russia into a land of mili- 
tary barracks. 

It is not a pretty picture. Perhaps I might have shortened 
this description of the Great Reaction. But it is just as well 
that you should have a thorough knowledge of this era. It was 
not the first time that an attempt had been made to set the 
clock of history back. The result was the usual one. 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 



THE LOVE OF NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, 
HOWEVER WAS TOO STRONG TO BE DE- 
STROYED IN THIS WAY. THE SOUTH 
AMERICANS WERE THE FIRST TO REBEL 
AGAINST THE REACTIONARY MEASURES 
OF THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA, GREECE 
AND BELGIUM AND SPAIN AND A LARGE 
NUMBER OF OTHER COUNTRIES OF THE 
EUROPEAN CONTINENT FOLLOWED SUIT 
AND THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS 
FILLED WITH THE RUMOUR OF MANY 
WARS OF INDEPENDENCE 

It will serve no good purpose to say "if only the Congress 
of Vienna had done such and such a thing instead of taking 
such and such a course, the history of Europe in the nineteenth 
century would have been different." The Congress of Vienna 
was a gathering of men who had just passed through a great 
revolution and through twenty years of terrible and almost 
continuous warfare. They came together for the purpose of 
giving Europe that "peace and stability" which they thought 
that the people needed and wanted. They were what we call 
reactionaries. They sincerely believed in the inability of the 
mass of the people to rule themselves. They re-arranged the 
map of Europe in such a way as seemed to promise the greatest 
possibility of a lasting success. They failed, but not through 

381 



382 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

any premeditated wickedness on their part. They were, for the 
greater part, men of the old school who remembered the happier 
days of their quiet youth and ardently wished a return of that 
blessed period. They failed to recognise the strong hold which 
many of the revolutionary principles had gained upon the peo- 
ple of the European continent. That was a misfortune but 
hardly a sin. But one of the things which the French Revolu- 
tion had taught not only Europe but America as well, was the 
right of people to their own "nationality." 

Napoleon, who respected nothing and nobody, was utterly 
ruthless in his dealing with national and patriotic aspirations. 
But the early revolutionary generals had proclaimed the new 
doctrine that "nationality was not a matter of political fron- 
tiers or round skulls and broad noses, but a matter of the 
heart and soul." While they were teaching the French children 
the greatness of the French nation, they encouraged Spaniards 
and Hollanders and Italians to do the same thing. Soon 
these people, who all shared Rousseau's belief in the superior 
virtues of Original Man, began to dig into their past and found, 
buried beneath the ruins of the feudal system, the bones of the 
mighty races of which they supposed themselves the feeble 
descendants. 

The first half of the nineteenth century was the era of the 
great historical discoveries. Everywhere historians were busy 
publishing mediaeval charters and early mediaeval chronicles 
and in every country the result was a new pride in the old 
fatherland. A great deal of this sentiment was based upon the 
wrong interpretation of historical facts. But in practical poli- 
tics, it does not matter what is true, but everything depends 
upon what the people believe to be true. And in most countries 
both the kings and their subjects firmly believed in the glory 
and fame of their ancestors. 

The Congress of Vienna was not inclined to be sentimental. 
Their Excellencies divided the map of Europe according to the 
best interests of half a dozen dynasties and put "national aspi- 
rations" upon the Index, or list of forbidden books, together 
with all other dangerous "French doctrines." 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 383 

But history is no respecter of Congi'esses. For some rea- 
son or other (it may be an historical law, which thus far has 
escaped the attention of the scholars) "nations" seemed to be 
necessary for the orderly development of human society and 
the attempt to stem this tide was quite as unsuccessful as the 
Metternichian effort to prevent people from thinking. 

Curiously enough the first trouble began in a very distant 
part of the world, in South America. The Spanish colonies 
of that continent had been enjoying a period of relative inde- 
pendence during the many years of the great Napoleonic wars. 
They had even remained faithful to their king when he was 
taken prisoner by the French Emperor and they had refused 
to recognise Joseph Bonaparte, who had in the year 1808 been 
made King of Spain by order of his brother. 

Indeed, the only part of America to get very much upset 
by the Revolution was the island of Haiti, the Espagnola of 
Columbus' first trip. Here in the year 1791 the French Con- 
vention, in a sudden outburst of love and human brotherhood, 
had bestowed upon their black brethren all the privileges hither- 
to enjoyed by their white masters. Just as suddenly they had 
repented of this step, but the attempt to undo the original 
promise led to many years of terrible warfare between General 
Leclerc, the brother-in-law of Napoleon, and Toussaint I'Ou- 
verture, the negro chieftain. In the year 1801, Toussaint was 
asked to visit Leclerc and discuss terms of peace. He received 
the solemn promise that he would not be molested. He trusted 
his white adversaries, was put on board a ship and shortly 
afterwards died in a French prison. But the negroes gained 
their independence all the same and founded a Republic. Inci- 
dentally they were of great help to the first great South 
American patriot in his efforts to deliver his native country 
from the Spanish yoke. 

Simon Bolivar, a native of Caracas in Venezuela, born in 
the year 1783, had been educated in Spain, had visited Paris 
where he had seen the Revolutionary government at work, had 
lived for a while in the United States and had returned to his 
native land where the widespread discontent against Spain, 



384 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

the mother country, was beginning to take a definite form. 
In the year 1811, Venezuela declared its independence and 
Bolivar became one of the revolutionary generals. Within 
two months, the rebels were defeated and Bolivar fled. 

For the next five years he was the leader of an apparently 
lost cause. He sacrificed all his wealth and he would not have 
been able to begin his final and successful expedition without 
the support of the President of Haiti. Thereafter the revolt 
spread all over South America and soon it appeared that Spain 
was not able to suppress the rebellion unaided. She asked for 
the support of the Holy Alliance. 

This step greatly worried England. The British shippers 
had succeeded the Dutch as the Common Carriers of the world 
and they expected to reap heavy profits from a declaration of 
independence on the part of all South America. They had 
hopes that the United States of America would interfere but 
the Senate had no such plans and in the House, too, there were 
many voices which declared that Spain ought to be given a 
free hand. 

Just then, there was a change of ministers in England. 
The Whigs went out and the Tories came in. George Canning 
became secretary of State. He dropped a hint that England 
would gladly back up the American government with all the 
might of her fleet, if said government would declare its disap- 
proval of the plans of the Holy Alliance in regard to the 
rebellious colonies of the southern continent. President Mon- 
roe thereupon, on the 2nd of December of the year 1823, ad- 
dressed Congress and stated that: "America would consider 
any attempt on the part of the allied powers to extend their 
system to any portion of this western hemisphere as dangerous 
to our peace and safety," and gave warning that "the American 
government would consider such action on the part of the 
Holy Alliance as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition 
toward the United States." Four weeks later, the text of the 
"Monroe Doctrine" was printed in the English newspapers and 
the members of the Holy Alliance were forced to make their 
choice. 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 



385 



Metternich hesitated. Personally he would have been will- 
ing to risk the displeasure of the United States (which had al- 
lowed both its army and navy to fall into neglect since the end 




THE MONROE DOCTRINE 



386 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

of the Anglo-American war of the year 1812.) But Canning's 
threatening attitude and trouble on the continent forced him 
to be careful. The expedition never took place and South 
America and Mexico gained their independence. 

As for the troubles on the continent of Europe, they were 
coming fast and furious. The Holy Alliance had sent French 
troops to Spain to act as guardians of the peace in the year 
1820. Austrian troops had been used for a similar purpose in 
Italy when the "Carbonari" (the secret society of the Charcoal 
Burners) were making propaganda for a united Italy and had 
caused a rebellion against the unspeakable Ferdinand of 
Naples. 

Bad news also came from Russia where the death of Alex- 
ander had been the sign for a revolutionary outbreak in St. 
Petersburg, a short but bloody upheaval, the so-called Deka- 
berist revolt, (because it took place in December,) which ended 
with the hanging of a large number of good patriots who had 
been disgusted by the reaction of Alexander's last yeais and 
had tried to give Russia a constitutional form of governnent. 

But worse was to follow. Metternich had tried to issure 
himself of the continued support of the European courb by a 
series of conferences at Aix-la-Chapelle at Troppm at 
Laibach and finally at Verona. The delegates fron the 
different powers duly travelled to these agreeable wa;ering 
places where the Austrian prime minister used to spend 
his summers. They always promised to do theii best 
to suppress revolt but they were none too certain of their 
success. The spirit of the people was beginning to be ugy and 
especially in France the position of the king was by no neans 
satisfactory. 

The real trouble however began in the Balkans, thegate- 
way to western Europe through which the invaders o that 
continent had passed since the beginning of time. Th first 
outbreak was in Moldavia, the ancient Roman proviice of 
Dacia which had been cut off from the Empire in the third 
century. Since then, it had been a lost land, a sort of Aiantis, 
where the people had continued to speak the old Roman t)ngue 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 387 

and still called themselves Romans and their country Roumania. 
Here in the year 1821, a young Greek, Prince Alexander 
Ypsilanti, began a revolt against the Turks. He told his fol- 
lowers that they could count upon the support of Russia. But 
Metternich's fast couriers were soon on their way to St. Peters- 
burg and the Tsar, entirely persuaded by the Austrian argu- 
ments in favor of "peace and stability," refused to help. Ypsil- 
anti was forced to flee to Austria where he spent the next seven 
years in prison. 

In the same year, 1821, trouble began in Greece. Since 
1815 a secret society of Greek patriots had been preparing 
the way for a revolt. Suddenly they hoisted the flag of inde- 
pendence in the Morea (the ancient Peloponessus) and drove 
the Turkish garrisons away. The Turks answered in the usual 
fashion. They took the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, 
who was regarded as their Pope both by the Greeks and by 
many Russians, and they hanged him on Easter Sunday of the 
year 1821, together with a number of his bishops. The Greeks 
came back with a massacre of all the Mohammedans in 
Tripolitsa, the capital of the Morea and the Turks retaliated 
by an attack upon the island of Chios, where they murdered 
25,000 Christians and sold 45,000 others as slaves into Asia and 
Egypt. 

Then the Greeks appealed to the European courts, but 
Metternich told them in so many words that they could "stew 
in their own grease," (I am not trying to make a pun, but I 
am quoting His Serene Highness who informed the Tsar that 
this "fire of revolt ought to burn itself out beyond the pale 
of civilisation"), and the frontiers were closed to those volun- 
teers who wished to go to the rescue of the patriotic Hellenes. 
Their cause seemed lost. At the request of Turkey, an Egyp- 
tian army was landed in the Morea and soon the Turkish flag 
was again flying from the Acropolis, the ancient stronghold of 
Athens. The Egyptian army then pacified the country "a la 
Turque," and Metternich followed the proceedings with quiet 
interest, awaiting the day when this "attempt against the peace 
of Europe" should be a thing of the past. 



388 :rHE STORY OF MANKIND 

Once more it was England which upset his plans. The 
greatest glory of England does not lie in her vast colonial 
possessions, in her wealth or her navy, but in the quiet hero- 
ism and independence of her average citizen. The Englishman 
obeys the law because he knows that respect for the rights of 
others marks the difference between a dog-kennel and civilised 
society. But he does not recognize the right of others to inter- 
fere with his freedom of thought. If his country does some- 
thing which he believes to be wrong, he gets up and says so 
and the government which he attacks will respect him and will 
give him full protection against the mob which to-day, as in 
the time of Socrates, often loves to destroy those who surpass 
it in courage or intelligence. There never has been a good 
cause, however unpopular or however distant, which has not 
counted a number of Englishmen among its staunchest adher- 
ents. The mass of the English people are not different from 
those in other lands. They stick to the business at hand and 
have no time for unpractical "sporting ventures." But they 
rather admire their eccentric neighbour who drops everything 
to go and fight for some obscure people in Asia or Africa and 
when he has been killed they give him a fine public funeral and 
hold him up to their children as an example of valor and chiv- 
alry. 

Even the police spies of the Holy Alliance were power- 
less against this national characteristic. In the year 1824, Lord 
Byron, a rich young Englishman who wrote the poetry over 
which all Europe wept, hoisted the sails of his yacht and started 
south to help the Greeks. Three months later the news spread 
through Europe that^heir hero lay dead in Missolonghi, 
the last of the Greek strongholds. His lonely death 
caught the imagination of the people. In all countries, societies 
were formed to help the Greeks. Lafayette, the grand old 
man of the American revolution, pleaded their cause in France. 
The king of Bavaria sent hundreds of his officers. Money and 
supplies poured in upon the starving men of Missolonghi. 

In England, George Canning, who had defeated the plans 
of the Holy Alliance in South America, was now prime minis- 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 389 

ter. He saw his chance to checkmate Metternich for a second 
time. The Enghsh and Russian fleets were already in the 
Mediterranean. They were sent by governments which dared 
no longer suppress the popular enthusiasm for the cause of the 
Greek patriots. The French navy appeared because France, 
since the end of the Crusades, had assumed the role of the de- 
fender of the Christian faith in Mohammedan lands. On Octo- 
ber 20 of the year 1827, the ships of the three nations attacked 
the Turkish fleet in the bay of Navarino and destroyed it. 
Rarely has the news of a battle been received with such general 
rejoicing. The people of western Europe and Russia who 
enjoyed no freedom at home consoled themselves by fighting 
an imaginary war of liberty on behalf of the oppressed Greeks. 
In the year 1829 they had their reward. Greece became an 
independent nation and the policy of reaction and stability 
suffered its second great defeat. 

It would be absurd were I to try, in this short volume, to 
give you a detailed account of the struggle for national inde- 
pendence in all other countries. There are a large number of 
excellent books devoted to such subjects. I have described the 
struggle for the independence of Greece because it was the first 
successful attack upon the bulwark of reaction which the Con- 
gress of Vienna had erected to "maintain the stability of Eu- 
rope." That mighty fortress of suppression still held out and 
Metternich continued to be in command. But the end was 
near. 

In France the Bourbons had established an almost unbear- 
able rule of police officials who were trying to undo the work 
of the French revolution, with an absolute disregard of the 
regulations and laws of civilised warfare. When Louis 
XVIII died in the year 1824, the people had enjoyed nine 
years of "peace" which had proved even more unhappy than 
the ten years of war of the Empire. Louis was succeeded by 
his brother, Charles X. 

Louis had belonged to that famous Bourbon family which, 
although it never learned anything, never forgot anything. 
The recollection of that morning in the town of Hamm, when 



390 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

news had reached him of the decapitation of his brother, re- 
mained a constant warning of what might happen to those 
kings who did not read the signs of the times aright. Charles, 
on the other hand, who had managed to run up private debts of 
fifty milhon francs before he was twenty years of age, knew 
nothing, remembered nothing and firmly intended to learn 
nothing. As soon as he had succeeded his brother, he estab- 
lished a government "by priests, through priests and for 
priests," and while the Duke of Wellington, who made this re- 
mark, cannot be called a violent liberal, Charles ruled in such 
a way that he disgusted even that trusted friend of law and 
order. When he tried to suppress the newspapers which dared 
to criticise his government, and dismissed the Parliament be- 
cause it supported the Press, his days were numbered. 

On the night of the 27th of July of the year 1830, a revo- 
lution took place in Paris. On the 30th of the same month, the 
king fled to the coast and set sail for England. In this way 
the "famous farce of fifteen years" came to an end and the 
Bourbons were at last removed from the throne of France. 
They were too hopelessly incompetent. France then might 
have returned to a Republican form of government, but such 
a step would not have been tolerated by Metternich. 

The situation was dangerous enough. The spark of rebel- 
lion had leaped beyond the French frontier and had set fire to 
another powder house filled with national grievances. The new 
kingdom of the Netherlands had not been a success. The Bel- 
gian and the Dutch people had nothing in common and their 
king, William of Orange (the descendant of an uncle of Wil- 
liam the Silent) , while a hard worker and a good business man, 
was too much lacking in tact and pliability to keep the peace 
among his uncongenial subjects. Besides, the horde of priests 
which had descended upon France, had at once found its way 
into Belgium and whatever Protestant William tried to do was 
howled down by large crowds of excited citizens as a fresh at- 
tempt upon the "freedom of •the Catholic church." On the 25th 
of August there was a popular outbreak against the Dutch 
authorities in Brussels. Two months later, the Belgians 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 391 

declared themselves independent and elected Leopold of Co- 
burg, the uncle of Queen Victoria of England, to the throne. 
That was an excellent solution of the difficulty. The two coun- 
tries, which never ought to have been united, parted their 
ways and thereafter lived in peace and harmony and behaved 
like decent neii?hbours. 

News in those days when there were only a few short rail- 
roads, travelled slowly, but when the success of the French 
and the Belgian revolutionists became known in Poland there 
was an immediate clash between the Poles and their Russian 
rulers which led to a year of terrible warfare and ended with a 
complete victory for the Russians who "established order along 
the banks of the Vistula" in the well-known Russian fashion. 
Nicholas the first, who had succeeded his brother Alexander in 
1825, firmly believed in the Divine Right of his own family, 
and the thousands of Polish refugees who had found shelter 
in western Europe bore witness to the fact that the principles 
of the Holy Alliance were still more than a hollow phrase in 
Holy Russia. 

In Italy too there was a moment of unrest. Marie Louise, 
Duchess of Parma and wife of the former Emperor Napo- 
leon, whom she had deserted after the defeat of Waterloo, was 
driven away from her country, and in the Papal state the exas- 
perated people tried to establish an independent Republic. 
But the armies of Austria marched to Rome and soon every- 
thing was as of old. Metternich continued to reside at the Ball 
Platz, the home of the foreign minister of the Habsburg 
dynasty, the police spies returned to their job, and peace 
reigned supreme. Eighteen more years were to pass before a 
second and more successful attempt could be made to deliver 
Europe from the terrible inheritance of the Vienna Con- 
gress. 

Again it was France, the revolutionary weather-cock of 
Europe, which gave the signal of revolt. Charles X had been 
succeeded by Louis Philippe, the son of that famous Duke of 
Orleans who had turned Jacobin, had voted for the death of his 
cousin the king, and had played a role during the early days 



392 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

of the revolution under the name of "Philippe Egalite" or 
"Equahty Phihp." Eventually he had been killed when 
Robespierre tried to purge the nation of all "traitors," (by 
which name he indicated those people who did not share his own 
views,) and his son had been forced to run away from the 
revolutionary army. Young Louis Philippe thereupon had 
wandered far and wide. He had taught school in Switzerland 
and had spent a couple of years exploring the unknown "far 
west" of America. After the fall of Napoleon he had returned 
to Paris. He was much more intelligent than his Bourbon 
cousins. He was a simple man who went about in the public 
parks with a red cotton umbrella under his arm, followed by a 
brood of children like any good housefather. But France had 
outgrown the king business and Louis did not know this until 
the morning of the 24th of February, of the year 1848, when 
a crowd stormed the Tuilleries and drove his Majesty away and 
proclaimed the Republic. 

When the news of this event reached Vienna, Metternich 
expressed the casual opinion that this was only a repetition 
of the year 1793 and that the Allies would once more be obliged 
to march upon Paris and make an end to this very unseemly 
democratic row. But two weeks later his own Austrian capital 
was in open revolt. Metternich escaped from the mob through 
the back door of his palace, and the Emperor Ferdinand was 
forced to give his subjects a constitution which embodied most 
of the revolutionary principles which his Prime Minister had 
tried to suppress for the last thirty-three years. 

This time all Europe felt the shock. Hungary declared it- 
self independent, and commenced a war against the Habs- 
burgs under the leadership of Louis Kossuth. The unequal 
struggle lasted more than a year. It was finally suppressed by 
the armies of Tsar Nicholas who marched across the Carpa- 
thian mountains and made Hungary once more safe for autoc- 
racy. The Habsburgs thereupon established extraordinary 
court-martials and hanged the greater part of the Hungarian 
patriots whom they had not been able to defeat in open battle. 

As for Italy, the island of Sicily declared itself independent 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 393 

from Naples and drove its Bourbon king away. In the Papal 
states the prime minister, Rossi, was murdered and the Pope 
was forced to flee. He returned the next year at the head of a 
French army which remained in Rome to protect His Holi- 
ness against his subjects until the year 1870. Then it was 
called back to defend France against the Prussians, and 
Rome became the capital of Italy. In the north, Milan and 
Venice rose against their Austrian masters. They were sup- 
ported by king Albert of Sardinia, but a strong Austrian army 
under old Radetzky marched into the valley of the Po, de- 
feated the Sardinians near Custozza and Novara and forced 
Albert to abdicate in favour of his son, Victor Emanuel, who 
a few years later was to be the first king of a united Italy. 

In Germany the unrest of the year 1848 took the form of a 
great national demonstration in favour of political unity and a 
representative form of government. In Bavaria, the king who 
had wasted his time and money upon an Irish lady who posed as 
a Spanish dancer — (she was called Lola Montez and lies buried 
in New York's Potter's Field) — ^was driven away by the en- 
raged students of the university. In Prussia, the king was 
forced to stand with uncovered head before the coffins of those 
who had been killed during the street fighting and to promise a 
constitutional form of government. And in March of the year 
1849, a German parliament, consisting of 550 delegates from 
all parts of the country came together in Frankfort and pro- 
posed that king Frederick William of Prussia should be the 
Emperor of a United Germany. 

Then, however, the tide began to turn. Incompetent Ferdi- 
nand had abdicated in favour of his nephew Francis Joseph. 
The well-drilled Austrian army had remained faithful to their 
war-lord. The hangman was given plenty of work and the 
Habsburgs, after the nature of that strangely cat-like fam- 
ily, once more landed upon their feet and rapidly strengthened 
their position as the masters of eastern and western Europe. 
They played the game of politics very adroitly and used the 
jealousies of the other German states to prevent the elevation 
of the Prussian king to the Imperial dignity. Their long train- 



394 THE STORY OF IMANKIND 

ing in the art of suffering defeat had taught them the value of 
patience. They knew how to wait. They bided their time 
and while the liberals, utterly untrained in practical politics, 
talked and talked and talked and got intoxicated by their own 
fine speeches, the Austrians quietly gathered their forces, dis- 
missed the Parliament of Frankfort and re-established the old 
and impossible German confederation which the Congress of 
Vienna had wished upon an unsuspecting world. 

But among the men who had attended this strange Parlia- 
ment of unpractical enthusiasts, there was a Prussian country 
squire by the name of Bismarck, who had made good use of his 
eyes and ears. He had a deep contempt for oratory. He knew 
(what every man of action has always known) that nothing 
is ever accomplished by talk. In his own way he was a sincere 
patriot. He had been trained in the old school of diplomacy 
and he could outlie his opponents just as he could outwalk 
them and outdrink them and outride them. 

Bismarck felt convinced that the loose confederation 
of little states must be changed into a strong united country 
if it would hold its own against the other European powers. 
Brought up amidst feudal ideas of loyalty, he decided that 
the house of HohenzoUern, of which he was the most faithful 
servant, should rule the new state, rather than the incompetent 
Habsburgs. For this purpose he must first get rid of the 
Austrian influence, and he began to make the necessary prepa- 
rations for this painful operation. 

Italy in the meantime had solved her own problem, and had 
rid herself of her hated Austrian master. The unity of Italy 
was the work of three men, Cavour, Mazzini and Garibaldi. 
Of these three, Cavour, the civil-engineer with the short-sighted 
eyes and the steel-rimmed glasses, played the part of the care- 
ful political pilot. Mazzini, who had spent most of his days 
in different European garrets, hiding from the Austrian police, 
was the public agitator, while Garibaldi, with his band of red- 
shirted rough-riders, appealed to the popular imagination. 

Mazzini and Garibaldi were both believers in the Repub- 
lican form of government. Cavour, however, was a monarch- 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 



395 



isf, and the others who recognised his superior ability in such 
matters of practical statecraft, accepted his decision and sacri- 
ficed their own ambitions for the greater good of their beloved 
Fatherland. 

Cavour felt towards the House of Sardinia as Bismarck 
did towards the HohenzoUern family. With infinite care and 
great shrewdness he set to work to jockey the Sardinian King 
into a position from which His Majesty would be able to as- 
sume the leadership of the entire Italian people. The unsettled 
political conditions in the rest of Europe greatly helped him in 
his plans and no country con- 
tributed more to the inde- 
pendence of Italy than her old 
and trusted (and often dis- 
trusted) neighbom-, France. 

In that turbulent countiy, 
in November of the year 1852, 
the Republic had come to a 
sudden but not unexpected end. 
Napoleon III the son of Louis 
Bonaparte the former King of 
Holland, and the small nephew 
of a great uncle, had re-estab- 
lished an Empire and had 
made himself Emperor "by the 
Grace of God and the Will of 
the People." 

This young man, who had been educated in Germany and 
who mixed his French with harsh Teutonic gutturals (just 
as the first Napoleon had always spoken the language of his 
adopted country with a strong Italian accent) was trying very 
hard to use the Napoleonic tradition for his own benefit. But 
he had many enemies and did not feel very certain of his hold 
upon his ready-made throne. He had gained the friendship 
of Queen Victoria but this had not been a difficult task, as the 
good Queen was not particularly brilliant and was very sus- 
ceptible to flattery. As for the other European sovereigns, 




GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 



396 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

they treated the French Emperor with insulting haughtiness 
and sat up nights devising new ways in which they could show 
their upstart "Good Brother" how sincerely they despised him. 

Napoleon was obliged to find a way in which he could break 
this opposition, either through love or through fear. He well 
knew the fascination which the word "glory" still held for his 
subjects. Since he was forced to gamble for his throne he 
decided to play the game of Empire for high stakes. He used 
an attack of Russia upon Turkey as an excuse for bringing 
about the Crimean war in which England and France com- 
bined against the Tsar on behalf of the Sultan. It was a very 
costly and exceedingly unprofitable enterprise. Neither 
France nor England nor Russia reaped much glory. 

But the Crimean war did one good thing. It give Sardinia 
a chance to volunteer on the winning side and when peace was 
declared it gave Cavour the opportunity to lay claim to the 
gratitude of both England and France. 

Having made use of the international situation to get Sar- 
dinia recognised as one of the more important powers of Eu- 
rope, the clever Italian then provoked a war between Sardinia 
and Austria in June of the year 1859. He assured himself of 
the support of Napoleon in exchange for the provinces of 
Savoy and the city of Nice, which was really an Italian town. 
The Franco-Italian armies defeated the Austrians at JNIagenta 
and Solferino, and the former Austrian provinces and duchies 
were united into a single Italian kingdom. Florence became 
the capital of this new Italy until the year 1870 when the 
French recalled their troops from Rome to defend France 
against the Germans. As soon as they were gone, the Itahan 
troops entered the eternal city and the House of Sardinia took 
up its residence in the old Palace of the Quirinal which an 
ancient Pope had built on the ruins of the baths of the Emperor 
Constantine. 

The Pope, however, moved across the river Tiber and hid 
behind the walls of the Vatican, which had been the home of 
many of his predecessors since their return from the exile of 
Avignon in the year 1377. He protested loudly against this 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 397 

high-handed theft of his domains and addressed letters of ap- 
peal to those faithful Catholics who were inclined to sympa- 
thise with him in his loss. Their number, however, was small, 
and it has been steadily decreasing. For, once delivered from 
the cares of state, the Pope was able to devote all his time to 
questions of a spiritual nature. Standing high above the petty 
quarrels of the European politicians, the Papacy assumed a new 
dignity which proved of great benefit to the church and made 
it an international power for social and religious progress 
which has shown a much more intelligent appreciation of mod- 
ern economic problems than most Protestant sects. 

In this way, the attempt of the Congress of Vienna to 
settle the Italian question by making the peninsula an Aus- 
trian province was at last undone. 

The German problem however remained as yet unsolved. 
It proved the most difficult of all. The failure of the revolution 
of the year 1848 had led to the wholesale migration of the more 
energetic and liberal elements among the German people. 
These young fellows had moved to the United States of Amer- 
ica, to Brazil, to the new colonies in Asia and America. Their 
work was continued in Germany but by a different sort of men. 

In the new Diet which met at Frankfort, after the collapse 
of the German Parliament and the failure of the Liberals to 
establish a united country, the Kingdom of Prussia was rep- 
resented by that same Otto von Bismarck from whom we parted 
a few pages ago. Bismarck by now had managed to gain the 
complete confidence of the king of Prussia. That was all he 
asked for. The opinion of the Prussian parliament or of the 
Prussian people interested him not at all. With his own eyes 
he had seen the defeat of the Liberals. He knew that he 
would not be able to get rid of Austria without a war and he 
began by strengthening the Prussian army. The Landtag, ex- 
asperated at his high-handed methods, refused to give him the 
necessary credits. Bismarck did not even bother to discuss 
the matter. He went ahead and increased his army with the 
help of funds which the Prussian house of Peers and the king 
placed at his disposal. Then he looked for a national cause 



398 THE STORY OF IMANKIND 

which could be used for the purpose of creating a great wave 
of patriotism among all the German people. 

In the north of Germany there were the Duchies of Schles- 
wig and Holstein which ever since the middle ages had been a 
source of trouble. Both countries were inhabited by a certain 
number of Danes and a certain number of Germans, but al- 
though they were governed by the King of Denmark, they 
were not an integral part of the Danish State and this led to 
endless difficulties. Heaven forbid that I should revive this 
forgotten question which now seems settled by the acts of the 
recent Congress of Versailles. But the Germans in Holstein 
were very loud in their abuse of the Danes and the Danes in 
Schleswig made a great ado of their Danishness, and all Eu- 
rope was discussing the problem and German Mannerchors 
and Turnvereins listened to sentimental speeches about the 
"lost brethren" and the different chancelleries were trying to 
discover what it was all about, when Prussia mobilised her 
armies to "save the lost provinces." As Austria, the official 
head of the German Confederation, could not allow Prussia 
to act alone in such an important matter, the Habsburg troops 
were mobilised too and the combined armies of the two great 
powers crossed the Danish frontiers and after a very brave re- 
sistance on the part of the Danes, occupied the two duchies. 
The Danes appealed to Europe, but Europe was otherwise 
engaged and the poor Danes were left to their fate. 

Bismarck then prepared the scene for the second number 
upon his Imperial programme. He used the division of the 
spoils to pick a quarrel with Austria. The Habsburgs fell into 
the trap. The new Prussian army, the creation of Bismarck and 
his faithful generals, invaded Bohemia and in less than six 
weeks, the last of the Austrian troops had been destroyed at 
Koniggratz and Sadowa and the road to Vienna lay open. But 
Bismarck did not want to go too far. He knew that he would 
need a few friends in Europe. He offered the defeated 
Habsburgs very decent terms of peace, provided they would 
resign their chairmanship of the Confederation. He was less 
merciful to many of the smaller German states who had taken 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 399 

the side of the Austrians, and annexed them to Prussia. The 
greater part of the northern states then formed a new organ- 
isation, the so-called North German Confederacy, and victor- 
ious Prussia asumed the unofficial leadership of the German 
people. 

Europe stood aghast at the rapidity with which the work of 
consolidation had been done. England was quite indifferent 
but France showed signs of disapproval. Napoleon's hold 
upon the French people was steadily diminishing. The Cri- 
mean war had been costly and had accomplished nothing. 

A second adventure in the year 1863, when a French army 
had tried to force an Austrian Grand-Duke by the name of 
Maximilian upon the Mexican people as their Emperor, had 
come to a disastrous end as soon as the American Civil War had 
been won by the North. For the Government at Washington 
had forced the French to withdraw their troops and this had 
given the Mexicans a chance to clear their country of the enemy 
and shoot the unwelcome Emperor. 

It was necessary to give the Napoleonic throne a new 
coat of glory-paint. Within a few years the North German 
Confederation would be a serious rival of France. Napoleon 
decided that a war with Germany would be a good thing for his 
dynasty. He looked for an excuse and Spain, the poor victim 
of endless revolutions, gave him one. 

Just then the Spanish throne happened to be vacant. It 
had been offered to the Catholic branch of the house of Hohen- 
zollern. The French government had objected and the Hoh- 
enzollerns had politely refused to accept the crown. But 
Napoleon, who was showing signs of illness, was very much 
under the influence of his beautiful wife, Eugenie de Monti jo, 
the daughter of a Spanish gentleman and the grand-daughter 
of William Kirkpatrick, an American consul at Malaga, where 
the grapes come from. Eugenie, although shrewd enough, was 
as badly educated as most Spanish women of that day. She 
was at the mercy of her spiritual advisers and these worthy gen- 
tlemen felt no love for the Protestant King of Prussia. "Be 
bold," was the advice of the Empress to her husband, but she 



400 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

omitted to add the second half of that famous Persian proverb 
which admonishes the hero to "be bold but not too bold." 
Napoleon, convinced of the strength of his array, addressed 
himself to the king of Prussia and insisted that the king give 
him assurances that "he would never permit another candi- 
dature of a Hohenzollern prince to the Spanish crown." As 
the Hohenzollerns had just declined the honour, the demand 
was superfluous, and Bismarck so informed the French govern- 
ment. But Napoleon was not satisfied. 

It was the year 1870 and King William was taking the 
waters at Ems. There one day he was approached by the 
French minister who tried to re-open the discussion. The king 
answered very pleasantly that it was a fine day and that the 
Spanish question was now closed and that nothing more 
remained to be said upon the subject. As a matter of 
routine, a report of this interview was telegraphed to 
Bismarck, who handled all foreign affairs. Bismarck edited 
the dispatch for the benefit of the Prussian and French 
press. Many people have called him names for doing 
this. Bismarck however could plead the excuse that the doc- 
toring of official news, since time immemorial, had been one 
of the privileges of all civilised governments. When the "edit- 
ed" telegram was printed, the good people in Berlin felt that 
their old and venerable king with his nice white whiskers had 
been insulted by an arrogant little Frenchman and the equally 
good people of Paris flew into a rage because their perfectly 
courteous minister had been shown the door by a Royal Prus- 
sian flunkey. 

An so they both went to war and in less than two months. 
Napoleon and the greater part of his army were prisoners of 
the Germans. The Second Empire had come to an end and the 
Third Repubhc was making ready to defend Paris against the 
German invaders. Paris held out for five long months. Ten 
days before the surrender of the city, in the nearby palace of 
Versailles, built by that same King Louis XIV who had been 
such a dangerous enemy to the Germans, the King of Prussia 
was publicly proclaimed German Emperor and a loud booming 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 401 

of guns told the hungry Parisians that a new German Empire 
had taken the place of the old harmless Confederation of Teu- 
tonic states and statelets. 

In this rough way, the German question was finally settled. 
By the end of the year 1871, fifty-six years after the memorable 
gathering at Vienna, the work of the Congress had been entirely 
undone. Metternich and Alexander and Talleyrand had tried 
to give the people of Europe a lasting peace. The methods 
they had employed had caused endless wars and revolutions and 
the feeling of a common brotherhood of the eighteenth century- 
was followed by an era of exaggerated nationalism which has 
not yet come to an end. 



BUT WHILE THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE WERE 
FIGHTING FOR THEIR NATIONAL INDE- 
PENDENCE, THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY 
LIVED HAD BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED 
BY A SERIES OF INVENTIONS, WHICH HAD 
MADE THE CLUMSY OLD STEAM-ENGINE 
OF THE 18TH CENTURY THE MOST FAITH- 
FUL AND EFFICIENT SLAVE OF MAN 

The greatest benefactor of the human race died more than 
half a milHon years ago. He was a hairy creature with a low 
brow and sunken eyes, a heavy jaw and strong tiger-like teeth. 
He would not have looked well in a gathering of modern sci- 
entists, but they would have honoured him as their master. For 
he had used a stone to break a nut and a stick to lift up a heavy 
boulder. He was the inventor of the hammer and the lever, our 
first tools, and he did more than any human being who came 
after him to give man his enormous advantage over the other 
animals with whom he shares this planet. 

Ever since, man has tried to make his life easier by the use 
of a greater number of tools. The first wheel (a round disc 
made out of an old tree) created as much stir in the communi- 
ties of 100,000 B.C. as the flying machine did only a few years 
ago. 

In Washington, the story is told of a director of the Patent 
Office who in the early thirties of the last century suggested 

402 



THE AGE OF THE ENGINE 403 

that the Patent Office be abolished, because "everything that 
possibly could be invented had been invented." A similar 
feehng must have spread through the prehistoric world when 
the first sail was hoisted on a raft and the people were able 
to move from place to place without rowing or punting or 
pulling from the shore. 

Indeed one of the most interesting chapters of history is 
the effort of man to let some one else or something else do his 
work for him, while he enjoyed his leisure, sitting in the sun 
or painting pictures on rocks, or training young wolves and 
little tigers to behave like peaceful domestic animals. 

Of course in the very olden days, it was always possible 
to enslave a weaker neighbour and force him to do the unpleas- 
ant tasks of life. One of the reasons why the Greeks and 
Romans, who were quite as intelligent as we are, failed to 
devise more interesting machinery, was to be found in the wide- 
spread existence of slavery. Why should a great mathema- 
tician waste his time upon wires and pulleys and cogs and fill 
the air with noise and smoke when he could go to the market- 
place and buy all the slaves he needed at a very small expense? 

And during the middle-ages, although slavery had been 
abolished and only a mild form of serfdom survived, the guilds 
discouraged the idea of using machinery because they thought 
this would throw a large number of their brethren out of 
work. Besides, the Middle-Ages were not at all interested 
in producing large quantities of goods. Their tailors and butch- 
ers and carpenters worked for the immediate needs of the small 
community in which they lived and had no desire to compete 
with their neighbours, or to produce more than was strictly 
necessary. 

During the Renaissance, when the prejudices of the Church 
against scientific investigations could no longer be enforced as 
rigidly as before, a large number of men began to devote their 
lives to mathematics and astronomy and physics and chemistry. 
Two years before the beginning of the Thirty Years War, 
John Napier, a Scotchman, had published his little book which 
described the new invention of logarithms. During the war it- 



404. THE STORY OF MANKIND 

self, Gottfried Leibnitz of Leipzig had perfected the system of 
infinitesimal calculus. Eight years before the peace of West- 
phalia, Newton, the great English natural philosopher, was 
born, and in that same year Galileo, the Italian astronomer, 
died. Meanwhile the Thirty Years War had destroyed the pros- 
perity of central Europe and there was a sudden but very gen- 
eral interest in "alchemy," the strange pseudo-science of the 
middle-ages by which people hoped to turn base metals into 
gold. This proved to be impossible but the alchemists in their 
laboratories stumbled upon many new ideas and greatly helped 
the work of the chemists who were their successors. 

The work of all these men provided the world with a solid 
scientific foundation upon which it was possible to build even 
the most complicated of engines, and a number of practical 
men made good use of it. The Middle- Ages had used wood for 
the few bits of necessary machinery. But wood wore out 
easily. Iron was a much better material, but iron was scarce 
except in England. In England therefore most of the smelt- 
ing was done. To smelt iron, huge fires were needed. In the 
beginning, these fires had been made of wood, but gradually 
the forests had been used-up. Then "stone coal" (the petri- 
fied trees of prehistoric times) was used. But coal as you 
know has to be dug out of the ground and it has to be trans- 
ported to the smelting ovens and the mines have to be kept 
dry from the ever invading waters. 

These were two problems which had to be solved at once. 
For the time being, horses could still be used to haul the coal- 
wagons, but the pumping question demanded the application 
of special machinery. Several inventors were busy trying to 
solve the difficulty. They all knew that steam would have to 
be used in their new engine. The idea of the steam engine was 
very old. Hero of Alexandria, who lived in the first century 
before Christ, has described to us several bits of machinery 
which were driven by steam. The people of the Renaissance 
had played with the notion of steam-driven war chariots. The 
Marquis of Worcester, a contemporary of Newton, in his book 
of inventions, tells of a steam engine. A little later, in the year 




THE MODERN CITY 



THE AGE OF THE ENGINE 405 

1698, Thomas Savery of London applied for a patent for a 
pumping engine. At the same time, a Hollander, Christian 
Huygens, was trying to perfect an engine in which gun-powder 
was used to cause regular explosions in much the same way as 
we use gasoline in our motors. 

All over Europe, people were busy with the idea. Denis 
Papin, a Frenchman, friend and assistant of Huygens, was 
making experiments with steam-engines in several countries. 
He invented a little wagon that was driven by steam, and a 
paddle-wheel boat. But when he tried to take a trip in his 
vessel, it was confiscated by the authorities on a complaint of 
the boatmen's union, who feared that such a craft would de- 
prive them of their livelihood. Papin finally died in London in 
great poverty, having wasted all his money on his inventions. 
But at the time of his death, another mechanical enthusiast, 
Thomas Newcomen, was working on the problem of a new 
steam-pump. Fifty years later his engine was improved upon 
by James Watt, a Glasgow instrument maker. In the year 
1777, he gave the world the first steam engine that proved of 
real practical value. 

But during the centuries of experiments with a "heat-en- 
gine," the political world had greatly changed. The British 
people had succeeded the Dutch as the common-carriers of the 
world's trade. They had opened up new colonies. They took 
the raw materials which the colonies produced to England, 
and there they turned them into finished products, and then 
they exported the finished goods to the four corners of the 
world. During the seventeenth century, the people of Georgia 
and the Carolinas had begun to grow a new shrub which gave 
a strange sort of woolly substance, the so-called "cotton wool." 
After this had been plucked, it was sent to England and there 
the people of Lancastershire wove it into cloth. This weaving 
was done by hand and in the homes of the workmen. Very soon 
a number of improvements were made in the process of weav- 
ing. In the year 1730, John Kay invented the "fly shuttle." 
In 1770, James Hargreaves got a patent on his "spinning 
jenny." Eli Whitney, an American, invented the cotton-gin, 



406 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

which separated the cotton from its seeds, a job which had pre- 
viously been done by hand at the rate of only a pound a day. 
Finally Richard Arkwright and the Reverend Edmund Cart- 
wright invented large weaving machines, which were driven by 
water power. And then, in the eighties of the eighteenth 
century, just when the Estates General of France had begun 
those famous meetings which were to revolutionise the political 
system of Europe, the engines of Watt were arranged in such 
a way that they could drive the weaving machines of Ark- 
wright, and this created an economic and social revolution 
which has changed human relationship in almost every part 
of the world. 

As soon as the stationary engine had proved a success, the 
inventors turned their attention to the problem of propelling 
boats and carts with the help of a mechanical contrivance. 
Watt himself designed plans for a "steam locomotive," but 
ere he had perfected his ideas, in the year 1804, a locomotive 
made by Richard Trevithick carried a load of twenty tons at 
Pen-y-darran in the Wales mining district. 

At the same time an American jeweller and portrait-painter 
by the name of Robert Fulton was in Paris, trying to con- 
vince Napoleon that with the use of his submarine boat, the 
"Nautilus," and his "steam-boat," the French might be able to 
destroy the naval supremacy of England. 

Fulton's idea of a steamboat was not original. He had un- 
doubtedly copied it from John Fitch, a mechanical genius '^of 
Connecticut whose cleverly constructed steamer had first navi- 
gated the Delaware river as early as the year 1787. But Napo- 
leon and his scientific advisers did not believe in the practical 
possibility of a self-propelled boat, and although the Scotch- 
built engine of the little craft puffed merrily on the Seine, the 
great Emperor neglected to avail himself of this formidable 
weapon which might have given him his revenge for Trafalgar. 

As for Fulton, he returned to the United States and, being 
a practical man of business, he organised a successful steam- 
boat company together with Robert R. Livingston, a signer of 
the Declaration of Independence, who was American Minister 



THE AGE OF THE ENGINE 



407 



to France when Fulton was in Paris, trying to sell his inven- 
tion. The first steamer of this new company, the "Clermont," 
which was given a monopoly of all the waters of New York 
State, equipped with an engine built by Boulton and Watt of 
Birmingham in England, began a regular service between New 
York and Albany in the year 1807. 

As for poor John Fitch, the man who long before any one 
else had used the "steam-boat" for commercial purposes, he 
came to a sad death. Broken in health and empty of purse, he 
had come to the end of his resources when his fifth boat, which 




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THE FIRST STEAMBOAT 



was propelled by means of a screw-propeller, had been de- 
stroyed. His neighbours jeered at him as they were to laugh a 
hundred years later when Professor Langley constructed his 
funny flying machines. Fitch had hoped to give his country 
an easy access to the broad rivers of the west and his country- 
men preferred to travel in flat-boats or go on foot. In the year 
1798, in utter despair and misery. Fitch killed himself by tak- 
ing poison. 

But twenty years later, the "Savannah," a steamer of 1850 



408 



^THE STORY OF MANKIND 



tons and making six knots an hour, (the Mauretania goes just 
four times as fast, ) crossed the ocean from Savannah to Liver- 
pool in the record time of twenty-five days. Then there was 
an end to the derision of the multitude and in their enthusiasm 
the people gave the credit for the invention to the wrong man. 
Six years later, George Stephenson, a Scotchman, who had 










'S^^> //fS£ 




-72. „ '^'^WM^F^'^^-^ O 








iHE oR)Ci/o or TfiE JTe^A^fioAT 



n 






THE ORIGIN OF THE STEAMBOAT 



been building locomotives for the purpose of hauling coal from 
the mine-pit to smelting ovens and cotton factories, built his 
famous "travelling engine" which reduced the price of coal by 
almost seventy per cent and which made it possible to estab- 
lish the first regular passenger service between Manchester and 
Liverpool, when people were whisked from city to city at the 
unheard-of speed of fifteen miles per hour. A dozen years 
later, this speed had been increased to twenty miles per hour. 



THE AGE OF THE ENGINE 



409 



At the present time, any well-behaved flivver (the direct de- 
scendant of the puny little motor-driven machines of Daimler 
and Levassor of the eighties of the last century) can do better 
than these early "Puffing Billies." 

But while these practically-minded engineers were improv- 
ing upon their rattling "heat engines," a group of "pure" 




'*-^eAj ^£ 



A of* SB On « * y 









3 eeA\ vj^ I c«t/ 



^^^^^^,_, fVAi/tiXy f¥e fiMT The 



The oR«<s/>o oc THe Ao1omo&' ^.^ 



THE ORIGIN OF THE AUTOMOBILE 

scientists (men who devote fourteen hours of each day to the 
study of those "theoretical" scientific phenomena without which 
no mechanical progress would be possible) were following a 
new scent which promised to lead them into the most secret and 
hidden domains of Nature. 

Two thousand years ago, a number of Greek and Roman 
philosophers (notably Thales of Miletus and Pliny who was 
killed while trying to study the eruption of Vesuvius of the 



410 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

year 79 when Pompeii and Herciilaneum were buried beneath 
the ashes) had noticed the strange antics of bits of straw and of 
feather which were held near a piece of amber which was being 
rubbed with a bit of wool. The schoolmen of the Middle Ages 
had not been interested in this mysterious "electric" power. 
But immediately after the Renaissance, William Gilbert, the 
private physician of Queen Elizabeth, wrote his famous treatise 
on the character and behaviour of Magnets. During the 
Thirty Years War Otto von Guericke, the burgomaster of 
Magdeburg and the inventor of the air-pump, constructed the 
first electrical machine. During the next century a large num- 
ber of scientists devoted themselves to the study of electricity. 
Not less than three professors invented the famous Leyden 
Jar in the year 1795. At the same time, Benjamin Franklin, 
the most universal genius of America next to Benjamin Thom- 
son (who after his flight from New Hampshire on account of 
his pro-British sympathies became known as Count Rumford) 
was devoting his attention to this subject. He discovered that 
lightning and the electric spark were manifestations of the same 
electric power and continued his electric studies until the end of 
his busy and useful life. Then came Volta with his famous 
"electric pile" and Galvani and Day and the Danish professor 
Hans Christian Oersted and Ampere and Arago and Faraday, 
all of them diligent searchers after the true nature of the elec- 
tric forces. 

They freely gave their discoveries to the world and Samuel 
Morse (who like Fulton began his career as an artist) thought 
that he could use this new electric current to transmit mes- 
sages from one city to another. He intended to use copper 
wire and a little machine which he had invented. People 
laughed at him. Morse therefore was obliged to finance his 
own experiments and soon he had spent all his money and 
then he was very poor and people laughed even louder. He 
then asked Congress to help him and a special Committee on 
Commerce promised him their support. But the members of 
Congress were not at all interested and Morse had to wait 



THE AGE OF THE ENGINE 411 

twelve years before he was given a small congressional appro- 
priation. He then built a "telegraph" between Baltimore and 
Washington. In the year 1837 he had shown his first success- 
ful "telegi-aph" in one of the lecture halls of New York Uni- 
versity. Finally, on the 24th of May of the year 1844 the 
first long-distance message was sent from Washington to Bal- 
timore and to-day the whole world is covered with telegraph 
wires and we can send news from Europe to Asia in a few sec- 
onds. Twenty-three years later Alexander Graham Bell used 
the electric current for his telephone. And half a century after- 
wards Marconi improved upon these ideas by inventing a sys- 
tem of sending messages which did away entirely with the old- 
fashioned wires. 

While Morse, the New Englander, was working on his 
"telegraph," Michael Faraday, the Yorkshire-man, had con- 
structed the first "dynamo." This tiny little machine was com- 
pleted in the year 1831 when Europe was still trembling as a 
result of the great July revolutions which had so severely upset 
the plans of the Congress of Vienna. The first dynamo grew 
and grew and grew and to-day it provides us with heat and 
with light (you know the little incandescent bulbs which Edi- 
son, building upon French and English experiments of the for- 
ties and fifties, first made in 1878) and with power for all sorts 
of machines. If I am not mistaken the electric-engine will 
soon entirely drive out the "heat engine" just as in the olden 
days the more highly-organised prehistoric animals drove out 
their less efficient neighbours. 

Personally (but I know nothing about machinery) this will 
make me very happy. For the electric engine which can be run 
by waterpower is a clean and companionable servant of man- 
kind but the "heat-engine," the marvel of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, is a noisy and dirty creature for ever filling the world with 
ridiculous smoke-stacks and with dust and soot and asking 
that it be fed with coal which has to be dug out of mines at 
great inconvenience and risk to thousands of people. 

And if I were a novehst and not a historian, who must stick 



412 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

to facts and may not use his imagination, I would describe the 
happy day when the last steam locomotive shall be taken to the 
Museum of Natural History to be placed next to the skeleton 
of the Dynosaur and the Pteredactyl and the other extinct 
creatures of a by-gone age. 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 



BUT THE NEW ENGINES WERE VERY EXPEN- 
SIVE AND ONLY PEOPLE OF WEALTH 
COULD AFFORD THEM. THE OLD CARPEN- 
TER OR SHOEMAKER WHO HAD BEEN HIS 
OWN MASTER IN HIS LITTLE WORKSHOP 
WAS OBLIGED TO HIRE HIMSELF OUT TO 
THE OWNERS OF THE BIG MECHANICAL 
TOOLS, AND WHILE HE MADE MORE 
MONEY THAN BEFORE, HE LOST HIS FOR- 
MER INDEPENDENCE AND HE DID NOT 
LIKE THAT 

In the olden days the work of the world had been done by 
independent workmen who sat in their own little workshops in 
the front of their houses, who owned their tools, who boxed the 
ears of their own apprentices and who, within the limits pre- 
scribed by their guilds, conducted their business as it pleased 
them. They lived simple lives, and were obliged to work very 
long hours, but they were their own masters. If they got up 
and saw that it was a fine day to go fishing, they went fishing 
and there was no one to say "no." 

But the introduction of machinery changed this. A ma- 
chine is really nothing but a greatly enlarged tool. A rail- 
road train which carries you at the speed of a mile a minute is 
in reality a pair of very fast legs, and a steam hammer which 
flattens heavy plates of iron is just a terrible big fist, made of 
steel. 

413 



414 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



But whereas we can all afford a pair of good legs and a 
good strong fist, a railroad train and a steam hammer and a 
cotton factory are very expensive pieces of machinery and they 
are not owned by a single man, but usually by a company of 
people who all contribute a certain sum and then divide the 







/voi)Ai>^ys i.iTri,E_^/t^^ *^ ^A4Q i^iAfs 2>a{ 



"Thb 'JA/yie Uj 




MAN POWER AND MACHINE POWER 



profits of their railroad or cotton mill according to the amount 
of money which they have invested. i 

Therefore, when machines had been improved until they f 
were really practicable and profitable, the builders of those 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 416 

large tools, the machine manufacturers, began to look for cus- 
tomers who could afford to pay for them in cash. 

During the early middle ages, when land had been almost 
the only form of wealth, the nobility were the only people 
who were considered wealthy. But as I have told you in a 
previous chapter, the gold and silver which they possessed 
was quite insignificant and they used the old system of bar- 
ter, exchanging cows for horses and eggs for honey. During 
the crusades, the burghers of the cities had been able to gather 
riches from the reviving trade between the east and the west, 
and they had been serious rivals of the lords and the knights. 

The French revolution had entirely destroyed the wealth 
of the nobility and had enormously increased that of the middle 
class or "bourgeoisie." The years of unrest which followed the 
Great Revolution had offered many middle-class people a 
chance to get more than their share of this world's goods. The 
estates of the church had been confiscated by the French Con- 
vention and had been sold at auction. There had been a terrific 
amount of graft. Land speculators had stolen thousands 
of square miles of valuable land, and during the Napoleonic 
wars, they had used their capital to "profiteer" in grain and 
gun-powder, and now they possessed more wealth than they 
needed for the actual expenses of their households, and they 
could afford to build themselves factories and to hire men and 
women to work the machines. 

This caused a very abrupt change in the lives of hundreds 
of thousands of people. Within a few years, many cities 
doubled the number of their inhabitants and the old civic centre 
which had been the real "home" of the citizens was surrounded 
with ugly and cheaply built suburbs where the workmen slept 
after their eleven or twelve hours, or thirteen hours, spent in the 
factories and from where they returned to the factory as soon 
as the whistle blew. 

Far and wide through the countryside there was talk of the 
fabulous sums of money that could be made in the towns. The 
peasant boy, accustomed to a life in the open, went to the city. 
He rapidly lost his old health amidst the smoke and dust and 



^16 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



dirt of those early and badly ventilated workshops, and the 
end, very often, was death in the poor-house or in the hospital. 
Of course the change from the farm to the factory on the 
part of so many people was not accomplished without a certain 
amount of opposition. Since one engine could do as much 
work as a hundred men, the ninety-nine others who were 
thrown out of employment did not like it. Frequently they at- 
tacked the factory-buildings and set fire to the machines, but 





r,r " r» «". •"• •'■'~^ '"•'"'f • ' 
T r r. r.r - /■ i- ^.-- .■ ^1 



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r.r. r.r-. nr v »' 
,-, r« T 1 . •'.* ,• 'I 




^^^-0^'^^^' 



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iftNl. 



i&a^ 



THE FACTORY 



Insurance Companies had been organised as early as the 17th 
century and as a rule the owners were well protected against 
loss. 

Soon, newer and better machines were installed, the fac- 
tory was surrounded with a high wall and then there was an 
end to the rioting. The ancient guilds could not possibly sur- 
vive in this new world of steam and iron. They went out of 
existence and then the workmen tried to organise regular labour 
unions. But the factory-owners, who through their wealth 
could exercise great influence uj)on the politicians of the dif- 
ferent countries, went to the Legislature and had laws passed 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 417 

which forbade the forming of such trade unions because they 
interfered with the "liberty of action" of the working man. 

Please do not think that the good members of Parlia- 
ment who passed these laws were wicked tyrants. They were 
the true sons of the revolutionary period when everybody 
talked of "liberty" and when people often killed their neigh- 
bours because they were not quite as liberty-loving as they 
ought to have been. Since "liberty" was the foremost virtue 
of man, it was not right that labour-unions should dictate to 
their members the hours during which they could work and 
the wages which they must demand. The workman must at 
all times, be "free to sell his services in the open market," and 
the employer must be equally "free" to conduct his business 
as he saw fit. The days of the Mercantile System, when 
the state had regulated the industrial life of the entire com- 
munity, were coming to an end. The new idea of "freedom" 
insisted that the state stand entirely aside and let commerce 
take its course. 

The last half of the 18th century had not merely been a 
time of intellectual and political doubt, but the old economic 
ideas, too, had been replaced by new ones which better suited the 
need of the hour. Several years before the French revolution, 
Turgot, who had been one of the unsuccessful ministers of 
finance of Louis XVI, had preached the novel doctrine of 
"economic liberty." Turgot lived in a country which had 
suffered from too much red-tape, too many regulations, too 
many officials trying to enforce too many laws. "Remove this 
official supervision," he wrote, "let the people do as they please, 
and everything will be all right." Soon his famous advice of 
"laissez faire" became the battle-cry around which the econom- 
ists of that period rallied. 

At the same time in England, Adam Smith was working 
on his mighty volumes on the "Wealth of Nations," which made 
another plea for "liberty" and the "natural rights of trade." 
Thirty years later, after the fall of Napoleon, when the reac- 
tionary powers of Europe had gained their victory at Vienna, 



418 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

that same freedom which was denied to the people in their 
pohtical relations was forced upon them in their industrial 
life. 

The general use of machinery, as I have said at the begin- 
ning of this chapter, proved to be of great advantage to the 
state. Wealth increased rapidly. The machine made it pos- 
sible for a single country, like England, to carry all the bur- 
dens of the great Napoleonic wars. The capitalists (the peo- 
ple who provided the money with which machines were bought) 
reaped enormous profits. They became ambitious and began 
to take an interest in politics. They tried to compete with the 
landed aristocracy which still exercised great influence upon 
the government of most European countries. 

In England, where the members of Parliament were still 
elected according to a Royal Decree of the year 1265, and 
where a large number of recently created industrial centres were 
without representation, they brought about the passing of the 
Reform Bill of the year 1832, which changed the electoral 
system and gave the class of the factory-owners more influ- 
ence upon the legislative body. This however caused great 
discontent among the millions of factory workers, who were 
left without any voice in the government. They too began 
an agitation for the right to vote. They put their demands 
down in a document which came to be known as the "People's 
Charter." The debates about this charter grew more and 
more violent. They had not yet come to an end when the revo- 
lutions of the year 1848 broke out. Frightened by the threat 
of a new outbreak of Jacobinism and violence, the English 
government placed the Duke of Wellington, who was now in 
his eightieth year, at the head of the army, and called for Vol- 
unteers. London was placed in a state of siege and prepara- 
tions were made to suppress the coming revolution. 

But the Chartist movement killed itself through bad lead- 
ership and no acts of violence took place. The new class of 
wealthy factory owners, (I dislike the word "bourgeoisie" 
which has been used to death by the apostles of a new social 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 419 

order,) slowly increased its hold upon the government, and 
the conditions of industrial life in the large cities continued to 
transform vast acres of pasture and wheat-land into dreary 
slums, which guard the approach of every modern European 
town. 



EMANCIPATION 



THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF MACHIN- 
ERY DID NOT BRING ABOUT THE ERA OF 
HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY WHICH 
HAD BEEN PREDICTED BY THE GENERA- 
TION WHICH SAW THE STAGE COACH RE- 
PLACED BY THE RAILROAD. SEVERAL 
REMEDIES WERE SUGGESTED BUT NONE 
OF THESE QUITE SOLVED THE PROBLEM 

In the year 1831, just before the passing of the first Re- 
form Bill Jeremy Bentham, the great English student of legis- 
lative methods and the most practical political reformer of that 
day, wrote to a friend: "The way to be comfortable is to 
make others comfortable. The way to make others comfort- 
able is to appear to love them. The way to appear to love them 
is to love them in reality." Jeremy was an honest man. He 
said what he believed to be true. His opinions were shared by 
thousands of his countrymen. They felt responsible for the 
happiness of their less fortunate neighbours and they tried 
their very best to help them. And Heaven knows it was time 
that something be done! 

The ideal of "economic freedom" (the "laissez faire" of 
Turgot) had been necessary in the old society where mediaeval 
restrictions lamed all industrial effort. But this "Hberty of 
action" which had been the highest law of the land had led to 
a terrible, yea, a frightful condition. The hours in the fac- 

420 



EMANCIPATION 421 

tory were limited only by the physical strength of the work- 
ers. As long as a woman could sit before her loom, without 
fainting from fatigue, she was supposed to work. Children of 
five and six were taken to the cotton mills, to save them from 
the dangers of the street and a life of idleness. A law had 
been passed which forced the children of paupers to go to work 
or be punished by being chained to their machines. In return 
for their services they got enough bad food to keep them alive 
and a sort of pigsty in which they could rest at night. Often 
they were so tired that they fell asleep at their job. To keep 
them awake a foreman with a whip made the rounds and beat 
them on the knuckles when it was necessary to bring them back 
to their duties. Of course, under these circumstances thousands 
of little children died. This was regrettable and the employers, 
who after all were human beings and not without a heart, sin- 
cerely wished that they could abolish "child labour." But since 
man was "free" it followed that children were "free" too. Be- 
sides, if Mr. Jones had tried to work his factory without the 
use of children of five and six, his rival, Mr. Stone, would have 
hired an extra supply of little boys and Jones would have been 
forced into bankruptcy. It was therefore impossible for Jones 
to do without child labour until such time as an act of Parlia- 
ment should forbid it for all employers. 

But as Parliament was no longer dominated by the old 
landed aristocracy (which had despised the upstart factory- 
owners with their money bags and had treated them with open 
contempt ) , but was under control of the representatives from 
the industrial centres, and as long as the law did not allow 
workmen to combine in labour-unions, very little was accom- 
plished. Of course the intelligent and decent people of that 
time were not blind to these terrible conditions. They were 
just helpless. Machinery had conquered the world by sur- 
prise and it took a great many years and the efforts of thou- 
sands of noble men and women to make the machine what it 
ought to be, man's servant, and not his master. 

Curiously enough, the first attack upon the outrageous 
system of employment which was then common in all parts of 



422 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

the world, was made on behalf of the black slaves of Africa 
and America. Slavery had been introduced into the Ameri- 
can continent by the Spaniards. They had tried to use the 
Indians as labourers in the fields and in the mines, but the In- 
dians, when taken away from a life in the open, had lain down 
and died and to save them from extinction a kind-hearted priest 
had suggested that negroes be brought from Africa to do the 
work. The negroes were strong and could stand rough treat- 
ment. Besides, association with the white man would give 
them a chance to learn Christianity and in this way, they would 
be able to save their souls, and so from every possible point of 
view, it would be an excellent arrangement both for the kindly 
white man and for his ignorant black brother. But with the 
introduction of machinery there had been a greater demand for 
cotton and the negroes were forced to work harder than ever 
before, and they too, like the Indians, began to die under the 
treatment which they received at the hands of the overseers. 

Stories of incredible cruelty constantly found their way to 
Europe and in all countries men and women began to agitate 
for the abolition of slavery. In England, William Wilberforce 
and Zachary Macauley, (the father of the great historian whose 
history of England you must read if you want to know how 
wonderfully interesting a history-book can be,) organised a 
society for the suppression of slavery. First of all they got a 
law passed which made "slave trading" illegal. And after the 
year 1840 there was not a single slave in any of the British colo- 
nies. The revolution of 1848 put an end to slavery in the 
French possessions. The Portuguese passed a law in the year 
1858 which promised all slaves their liberty in twenty years 
from date. The Dutch abolished slavery in 1863 and in the 
same year Tsar Alexander II returned to his serfs that liberty 
which had been taken away from them more than two centuries 
before. 

In the United States of America the question led to grave 
difficulties and a prolonged war. Although the Declaration 
of Independence had laid down the principle that "all men 
were created free and equal," an exception had been made for 



EMANCIPATION 423 

those men and women whose skins were dark and who worked 
on the plantations of the southern states. As time went on, the 
dishke of the people of the North for the institution of slavery 
increased and they made no secret of their feelings. The south- 
erners however claimed that they could not grow their cotton 
without slave-labour, and for almost fifty years a mighty de- 
bate raged in both the Congress and the Senate. 

The North remained obdurate and the South would not give 
in. When it appeared impossible to reach a compromise, the 
southern states threatened to leave the Union. It was a most 
dangerous point in the history of the Union. Many things 
"might" have happened. That they did not happen was the 
work of a very great and very good man. 

On the sixth of November of the year 1860, Abraham Lin- 
coln, an Illinois lawyer, and a man who had made his own in- 
tellectual fortune, had been elected president by the Repub- 
licans who were very strong in the anti-slavery states. He 
knew the evils of human bondage at first hand and his shrewd 
common-sense told him that there was no room on the northern 
continent for two rival nations. When a number of southern 
states seceded and formed the "Confederate States of Amer- 
ica," Lincoln accepted the challenge. The Northern states 
were called upon for volunteers. Hundreds of thousands of 
young men responded with eager enthusiasm and there fol- 
lowed four years of bitter civil war. The South, better pre- 
pared and following the brilliant leadership of Lee and Jack- 
son, repeatedly defeated the armies of the North. Then the 
economic strength of New England and the West began to 
tell. An unknown officer by the name of Grant arose from ob- 
scurity and became the Charles Martel of the great slave war. 
Without interruption he hammered his mighty blows upon the 
crumbling defences of the South. Early in the year 1863, 
President Lincoln issued his "Emancipation Proclamation" 
which set all slaves free. In April of the year 1865 Lee sur- 
rendered the last of his brave armies at Appomattox. A few 
days later, President Lincoln was murdered by a lunatic. But 
his work was done. With the exception of Cuba which was 



424 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

still under Spanish domination, slavery had come to an end in 
every part of the civilised world. 

But while the black man was enjoying an increasing amount 
of liberty, the "free" workmen of Europe did not fare quite so 
well. Indeed, it is a matter of surprise to many contemporary 
writers and observers that the masses of workmen (the so- 
called proletariat) did not die out from sheer misery. They 
lived in dirty houses situated in miserable parts of the slums. 
They ate bad food. They received just enough schooling to 
fit them for their tasks. In case of death or an accident, their 
families were not provided for. But the brewery and distillery 
interests, (who could exercise great influence upon the Legis- 
lature, ) encouraged them to forget their woes by offering them 
unlimited quantities of whisky and gin at very cheap rates. 

The enormous improvement which has taken place since the 
thirties and the forties of the last century is not due to the ef- 
forts of a single man. The best brains of two generations de- 
voted themselves to the task of saving the world from the dis- 
astrous results of the all-too-sudden introduction of machinery. 
They did not try to destroy the capitalistic system. This would 
have been very foolish, for the accumulated wealth of other 
people, when intelligently used, may be of very great benefit 
to all mankind. But they tried to combat the notion that true 
equality can exist between the man who has wealth and owns 
the factories and can close their doors at will without the risk 
of going hungry, and the labourer who must take whatever j ob 
is offered, at whatever wage he can get, or face the risk of star- 
vation for himself, his wife and his children. 

They endeavoured to introduce a number of laws which reg- 
ulated the relations between the factory owners and the fac- 
tory workers. In this, the reformers have been increasingly 
successful in all countries. To-day, the majority of the labour- 
ers are well protected; their hours are being reduced to the 
excellent average of eight, and their children are sent to the 
schools instead of to the mine pit and to the carding-room of 
the cotton mills. 

But there were other men who also contemplated the sight 



EMANCIPATION 425 

of all the belching smoke-stacks, who heard the rattle of the 
railroad trains, who saw the store-houses filled with a surplus 
of all sorts of materials, and who wondered to what ultimate 
goal this tremendous activity would lead in the years to come. 
They remembered that the human race had lived for hundreds 
of thousands of years without commercial and industrial com- 
petition. Could they change the existing order of things and 
do away with a system of rivalry which so often sacrified human 
happiness to profits? 

This idea — this vague hope for a better day — was not re- 
stricted to a single country. In England, Robert Owen, the 
owner of many cotton mills, established a so-called "socialistic 
community" which was a success. But when he died, the pros- 
perity of New Lanark came to an end and an attempt of Louis 
Blanc, a French journaHst, to establish "social workshops" 
all over France fared no better. Indeed, the increasing num- 
ber of socialistic writers soon began to see that little individual 
communities which remained outside of the regular industrial 
life, would never be able to accomplish anything at all. It 
was necessary to study the fundamental principles underlying 
the whole industrial and capitalistic society before useful reme- 
dies could be suggested. 

The practical socialists like Robert Owen and Louis 
Blanc and Fran9ois Fournier were succeeded by theoretical 
students of socialism like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Of 
these two, Marx is the best known. He was a very brilliant 
Jew whose family had for a long time lived in Germany. He 
had heard of the experiments of Owen and Blanc and he be- 
gan to interest himself in questions of labour and wages and 
unemployment. But his liberal views made him very unpopu- 
lar with the police authorities of Germany, and he was forced to 
flee to Brussels and then to London, where he lived a poor and 
shabby life as the correspondent of the New York Tribune. 

No one, thus far, had paid much attention to his books on 
economic subjects. But in the year 1864 he organised the first 
international association of working men and three years later, 
in 1867, he published the first volume of his well-known trea- 



426 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

tise called "Capital." Marx believed that all history was a 
long struggle between those who "have" and those who "don't 
have." The introduction and general use of machinery had 
created a new class in society, that of the capitalists who used 
their surplus wealth to buy the tools which were then used by 
the labourers to produce still more wealth, which was again used 
to build more factories and so on, until the end of time. Mean- 
while, according to Marx, the third estate (the bourgeoisie) 
was growing richer and richer and the fourth estate (the prole- 
tariat) was growing poorer and poorer, and he predicted that 
in the end, one man would possess all the wealth of the world 
while the others would be his employees and dependent upon 
his good will. 

To prevent such a state of affairs, Marx advised working 
men of all countries to unite and to fight for a number of politi- 
cal and economic measures which he had enumerated in a Man- 
ifesto in the year 1848, the year of the last great European 
revolution. 

These views of course were very unpopular with the gov- 
ernments of Europe, many countries, especially Prussia, passed 
severe laws against the Socialists and policemen were ordered 
to break up the Socialist meetings and to arrest the speakers. 
But that sort of persecution never does any good. Martyrs 
are the best possible advertisements for an unpopular cause. 
In Europe the number of socialists steadily increased and it 
was soon clear that the Socialists did not contemplate a violent 
revolution but were using their increasing power in the differ- 
ent Parliaments to promote the interests of the labouring 
classes. Socialists were even called upon to act as Cabinet 
Ministers, and they co-operated with progressive Catholics and 
Protestants to undo the damage that had been caused by the 
Industrial Revolution and to bring about a fairer division of 
the many benefits which had followed the introduction of ma- 
chinery and the increased production of wealth. 



BUT THE WORLD HAD UNDERGONE ANOTHER 
CHANGE WHICH WAS OF GREATER IM- 
PORTANCE THAN EITHER THE POLITICAL 
OR THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS. 
AFTER GENERATIONS OF OPPRESSION 
AND PERSECUTION, THE SCIENTIST HAD 
AT LAST GAINED LIBERTY OF ACTION 
AND HE WAS NOW TRYING TO DISCOVER 
THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS WHICH GOV- 
ERN THE UNIVERSE 

The Egj^ptians, the Baby- 
lonians, the Chaldeans, the 
Greeks and the Romans, had all 
contributed something to the first 
vague notions of science and sci- 
entific investigation. But the 
great migrations of the fourth 
century had destroyed the classi- 
cal world of the Mediterranean, 
and the Christian Church, which 
was more interested in the life of 
the soul than in the life of the 
body, had regarded science as a 
manifestation of that human ar- 
rogance which wanted to pry into divine affairs which belonged 
to the realm of Almighty God, and which therefore was closely 
related to the seven deadly sins. 

427 




THE PHILOSOPHER 



428 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

The Renaissance to a certain but limited extent had broken 
through this wall of Mediaeval prejudices. The Reformation^ 
however, which had overtaken the Renaissance in the early 16th 
century, had been hostile to the ideals of the "new civilisation," 
and once more the men of science were threatened with severe 
punishment, should they try to pass beyond the narrow limits 
of knowledge which had been laid down in Holy Writ. 

Our world is filled with the statues of great generals, atop 
of prancing horses, leading their cheering soldiers to glorious 
victory. Here and there, a modest slab of marble announces 
that a man of science has found his final resting place. A thou- 
sand years from now we shall probably do these things differ- 
ently, and the children of that happy generation shall know 
of the splendid courage and the almost inconceivable devotion 
to duty of the men who were the pioneers of that abstract 
knowledge, which alone has made our modern world a practical 
possibility. 

Many of these scientific pioneers suffered poverty and con- 
tempt and humiliation. They hved in garrets and died in dun- 
geons. They dared not print their names on the title-pages of 
their books and they dared not print their conclusions in the 
land of their birth, but smuggled the manuscripts to some secret 
printing shop in Amsterdam or Haarlem. They were exposed 
to the bitter enmity of the Church, both Protestant and Catho- 
lic, and were the subjects of endless sermons, inciting the par- 
ishioners to violence against the "heretics." 

Here and there they found an asylum. In Holland, where 
the spirit of tolerance was strongest, the authorities, while re- 
garding these scientific investigations with little favour, yet 
refused to interfere with people's freedom of thought. It be- 
came a little asylum for intellectual liberty where French and 
English and German philosophers and mathematicians and 
physicians could go to enjoy a short spell of rest and get a 
breath of free air. 

In another chapter I have told you how Roger Bacon, the 
great genius of the thirteenth century, was prevented for years 



THE AGE OF SCIENCE 



429 



from writing a single word, lest he get into new troubles with 
the authorities of the church. And five hundred years later, the 
contributors to the great philosophic "Encyclopaedia" were un- 
der the constant supervision of the French gendarmerie. Half 
a century afterwards, Darwin, who dared to question the story 
of the creation of man, as re- 
vealed in the Bible, was de- 
nounced from every pulpit as 
an enemy of the human race. 
Even to-day, the persecution of 
those who venture into the un- 
known realm of science has 
not entirely come to an end. 
And while I am writing this 
Mr. Bryan is addressing a vast 
multitude on the "Menace of 
Darwinism," warning his hear- 
ers against the errors of the 
great English naturalist. 

All this, however, is a mere 
detail. The work that has to 
be done invariably gets done, 
and the ultimate profit of the 
discoveries and the inventions 
goes to the mass of those same 
people who have always decried 
the man of vision as an unpractical idealist. 

The seventeenth century had still preferred to investi- 
gate the far oif heavens and to study the position of our 
planet in relation to the solar system. Even so, the Church had 
disapproved of this unseemly curiosity, and Copernicus who 
first of all had proved that the sun was the centre of the uni- 
verse, did not publish his work until the day of his death. Gali- 
leo spent the greater part of his hf e under the supervision of the 
clerical authorities, but he continued to use his telescope and 
provided Isaac Newton with a mass of practical observations, 
which greatly helped the Enghsh mathematician when he dis- 




GALILEO 



430 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

covered the existence of that interesting habit of falling ob- 
jects which came to be known as the Law of Gravitation. 

That, for the moment at least, exhausted the interest in the 
Heavens, and man began to study the earth. The invention 
of a workable microscope, (a strange and clumsy little thing,) 
by Anthony van Leeuwenhoek during the last half of the 17th 
century, gave man a chance to study the "microscopic" crea- 
tures who are responsible for so many of his ailments. It laid 
the foundations of the science of "bacteriology" which in the 
last forty years has delivered the world from a great number of 
diseases by discovering the tiny organisms which cause the 
complaint. It also allowed the geologists to make a more 
careful study of different rocks and of the fossils (the petrified 
prehistoric plants) which they found deep below the surface of 
the earth. These investigations convinced them that the earth 
must be a great deal older than was stated in the book of 
Genesis and in the year 1830, Sir Charles Lyell published his 
"Principles of Geology" which denied the story of creation as 
related in the Bible and gave a far more wonderful description 
of slow growth and gradual development. 

At the same time, the Marquis de Laplace was working on 
a new theory of creation, which made the earth a little blotch 
in the nebulous sea out of which the planetary system had 
been formed and Bunsen and Kirchhoff , by the use of the spec- 
troscope, were investigating the chemical composition of the 
stars and of our good neighbour, the sun, whose curious spots 
had first been noticed by Galileo. 

Meanwhile after a most bitter and relentless warfare with 
the clerical authorities of Catholic and Protestant lands, the 
anatomists and physiologists had at last obtained permission 
to dissect bodies and to substitute a positive knowledge of our 
organs and their habits for the guesswork of the mediaeval 
quack. 

Within a single generation (between 1810 and 1840) more 
progress was made in every branch of science than in all the 
hundreds of thousands of years that had passed since man first 
looked at the stars and wondered why they were there. It 





THE DllilGIBLE 



THE AGE OF SCIENCE 431 

must have been a very sad age for the people who had been 
educated under the old system. And we can understand their 
feehng of hatred for such men as Lamarck and Darwin, who 
did not exactly tell them that they were "descended from 
monkeys," (an accusation which our grandfathers seemed to 
regard as a personal insult,) but who suggested that the proud 
human race had evolved from a long series of ancestors who 
could trace the family-tree back to the little jelly-fishes who 
were the first inhabitants of our planet. 

The dignified world of the well-to-do middle class, which 
dominated the nineteenth century, was willing to make use 
of the gas or the electric light, of all the many practical appH- 
cations of the great scientific discoveries, but the mere inves- 
tigator, the man of the "scientific theory" without whom no 
progress would be possible, continued to be distrusted until 
very recently. Then, at last, his services were recognised. To- 
day the rich people who in past ages donated their wealth for 
the building of a cathedral, construct vast laboratories where 
silent men do battle upon the hidden enemies of mankind and 
often sacrifice their lives that coming generations may enjoy 
greater happiness and health. 

Indeed it has come to pass that many of the ills of this 
world, which our ancestors regarded as inevitable "acts of 
God," have been exposed as manifestations of our own ignor- 
ance and neglect. Every child nowadays knows that he can 
keep from getting typhoid fever by a little care in the choice of 
his drinking water. But it took years and years of hard 
work before the doctors could convince the people of this fact. 
Few of us now fear the dentist chair. A study of the mi- 
crobes that live in our mouth has made it possible to keep our 
teeth from decay. Must perchance a tooth be pulled, then we 
take a sniiF of gas, and go our way rejoicing. When the news- 
papers of the year 1846 brought the story of the "painless 
operation" which had been performed in America with the help 
of ether, the good people of Europe shook their heads. To 
them it seemed against the will of God that man should escape 
the pain which was the share of all mortals, and it took a long 



432 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

time before the practice of taking ether and chloroform for 
operations became general. 

But the battle of progress had been won. The breach in the 
old walls of prejudice was growing larger and larger, and as 
time went by, the ancient stones of ignorance came crumbling 
down. The eager crusaders of a new and happier social order 
rushed forward. Suddenly they found themselves facing a new 
obstacle. Out of the ruins of a long-gone past, another citadel 
of reaction had been erected, and millions of men had to give 
their lives before this last bulwark was destroyed. 



A CHAPTER OF ART 

When a baby is perfectly healthy and has had enough to eat 
and has slept all it wants, then it hums a little tune to show how 
happy it is. To gi'own-ups this humming means nothing. It 
sounds like "goo-zum, goo-zum, goo-o-o-o-o," but to the baby 
it is perfect music. It is his first contribution to art. 

As soon as he (or she) gets a little older and is able to sit 
up, the period of mud-pie making begins. These mud-pies do 
not interest the outside world. There are too many million 
babies, making too many million mud-pies at the same time. 
But to the small infant they represv^nt another expedition into 
the pleasant realm of art. The baby is now a sculptor. 

At the age of three or four, when the hands begin to obey 
the brain, the child becomes a painter. His fond mother gives 
him a box of coloured chalks and every loose bit of paper is 
rapidly covered with strange pothooks and scrawls which rep- 
resent houses and horses and terrible naval battles. 

Soon however this happiness of just "making things" 
comes to an end. School begins and the greater part of the 
day is filled up with work. The business of living, or rather 
the business of "making a living," becomes the most important 
event in the life of every boy and girl. There is little time left 
for "art" between learning the tables of multiplication and the 
past participles of the irregular French verbs. And unless 
the desire for making certain things for the mere pleasure of 

433 



4S4 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

creating them without any hope of a practical return be very 
strong, the child grows into manhood and forgets that the 
first five years of his life were mainly devoted to art. 

Nations are not different from children. As soon as the 
cave-man had escaped the threatening dangers of the long and 
shivering ice-period, and had put his house in order, he began 
to make certain things which he thought beautiful, although 
they were of no earthly use to him in his fight with the wild 
animals of the jungle. He covered the walls of his grotto with 
pictures of the elephants and the deer which he hunted, and 
out of a piece of stone, he hacked the rough figures of those 
women he thought most attractive. 

As soon as the Egyptians and the Babylonians and the 
Persians and all the other people of the east had founded 
their little countries along the Nile and the Euphrates, they 
began to build magnificent palaces for their kings, invented 
bright pieces of jewellery for their women and planted gardens 
which sang happy songs of colour with their many bright flow- 
ers. 

Our own ancestors, the wandering nomads from the dis- 
tant Asiatic prairies, enjoying a free and easy existence as 
fighters and hunters, composed songs which celebrated the 
mighty deeds of their great leaders and invented a form of 
poetry which has survived until our own day. A thousand years 
later, when they had established themselves on the Greek main- 
land, and had built their "city-states," they expressed their 
joy (and their sorrows) in magnificent temples, in statues, in 
comedies and in tragedies, and in every conceivable form of 
art. 

The Romans, like their Carthaginian rivals, were too busy 
administering other people and making money to have much 
love for "useless and unprofitable" adventures of the spirit. 
They conquered the world and built roads and bridges but they 
borrowed their art wholesale from the Greeks. They invented 
certain practical forms of architecture which answered the 
demands of their day and age. But their statues and their his- 
tories and their mosaics and their poems were mere Latin imi- 



ART 435 

tations of a Greek original. Without that vague and hard-to- 
define something which the world calls "personality," there can 
be no art and the Roman world distrusted that particular sort 
of personality. The Empire needed efficient soldiers and 
tradesmen. The business of writing poetry or making pic- 
tures was left to foreigners. 

Then came the Dark Ages. The barbarian was the prover- 
bial bull in the china-shop of western Europe. He had no use 
for what he did not understand. Speaking in terms of the year 
1921, he liked the magazine covers of pretty ladies, but threw 
the Rembrandt etchings which he had inherited into the ash- 
can. Soon he came to learn better. Then he tried to undo the 
damage which he had created a few years before. But the ash- 
cans were gone and so were the pictures. 

But by this time, his own art, which he had brought with 
him from the east, had developed into something very beautiful 
and he made up for his past neglect and indifference by the so- 
called "art of the Middle Ages" which as far as northern Eu- 
rope is concerned was a product of the Germanic mind and had 
borrowed but little from the Greeks and the Latins and nothing 
at all from the older forms of art of Egypt and Assyria, not 
to speak of India and China, which simply did not exist, as far 
as the people of that time were concerned. Indeed, so little 
had the northern races been influenced by their southern neigh- 
bours that their own architectural products were completely 
misunderstood by the people of Italy and were treated by 
them with downright and unmitigated contempt. 

You have all heard the word Gothic. You probably asso- 
ciate it with the picture of a lovely old cathedral, lifting its slen- 
der spires towards high heaven. But what does the word really 
mean? 

It means something "uncouth" and "barbaric" — something 
which one might expect from an "uncivilised Goth," a rough 
backwoods-man who had no respect for the established rules of 
classical art and who built his "modern horrors" to please his 
own low tastes without a decent regard for the examples of 
the Forum and the Acropolis. 



486 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

And yet for several centuries this form of Gothic architec- 
ture was the highest expression of the sincere feehng for art 
which inspired the whole northern continent. From a previous 
chapter, you will remember how the people of the late Middle 
Ages lived. Unless they were peasants and dwelt in villages, 
they were citizens of a "city" or "civitas," the old Latin name 
for a tribe. And indeed, behind their high walls and their deep 
moats, these good burghers were true tribesmen who shared 
the common dangers and enjoyed the conmion safety and pros- 
perity which they derived from their system of mutual protec- 
tion. 

In the old Greek and Roman cities the market-place, where 
the temple stood, had been the centre of civic life. During 
the Middle Ages, the Church, the House of God, became such a 
centre. We modern Protestant people, who go to our church 
only once a week, and then for a few hours only, hardly know 
what a mediaeval church meant to the community. Then, be- 
fore you were a week old, you were taken to the Church to be 
baptised. As a child, you visited the Church to learn the holy 
stories of the Scriptures. Later on you became a member 
of the congregation, and if you were rich enough you built 
yourself a separate little chapel sacred to the memory of the 
Patron Saint of your own family. As for the sacred edifice, 
it was open at all hours of the day and many of the night. In 
a certain sense it resembled a modern club, dedicated to all the 
inhabitants of the town. In the church you very likely caught 
a first glimpse of the girl who was to become your bride at a 
great ceremony before the High Altar. And finally, when the 
end of the journey had come, you were buried beneath the 
stones of this familiar building, that all your children and their 
grandchildren might pass over your grave until the Day oi 
Judgement. 

Because the Church was not only the House of God but 
also the true centre of all common life, the building had to be 
different from anything that had ever been constructed by 
the hands of man. The temples of the Egyptians and the 
Greeks and the Romans had been merely the shrine of a local 



ART 



487 



divinity. As no sermons were preached before the images of 
Osiris or Zeus or Jupiter, it was not necessary that the interior 
offer space for a great multitude. All the religious processions 
of the old Mediterranean peoples took place in the open. But 
in the north, where the 
weather was usually bad, f 
most functions were held 
under the roof of the church. 
During many centuries 
the architects struggled with 
this problem of constructing 
a building that was large 
enough. The Roman tradi- 
tion taught them how to 
build heavy stone walls with 
very small windows lest 
the walls lose their 
strength. On the top of 
this they then placed a heavy 
stone roof. But in the 
twelfth century, after the 
beginning of the Crusades, 
when the architects had seen 
the pointed arches of the 
Mohammedan builders, the 
western builders discovered 
a new style which gave them 
their first chance to make the 
sort of building which those 
days of an intense religious 
life demanded. And then 

they developed this strange style upon which the Italians 
bestowed the contemptuous name of "Gothic" or barbaric. 
They achieved their purpose by inventing a vaulted roof which 
was supported by "ribs." But such a roof, if it became 
too heavy, was apt to break the walls, just as a man 
of three hundred pounds sitting down upon a child's chair 




GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 



438 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

will force it to collapse. To overcome this difficulty, certain 
French architects then began to re-enforce the walls with 
"buttresses" which were merely heavy masses of stone against 
which the walls could lean while they supported the roof. And 
to assure the further safety of the roof they supported the ribs 
of the roof by so-called "flying buttresses," a very simple 
method of construction which you will understand at once when 
you look at our picture. 

This new method of construction allowed the introduction 
of enormous windows. In the twelfth century, glass was still 
an expensive curiosity, and very few private buildings pos- 
sessed glass windows. Even the castles of the nobles were 
without protection and this accounts for the eternal drafts 
and explains why people of that day wore furs in-doors as 
well as out. 

Fortunately, the art of making coloured glass, with which 
the ancient people of the Mediterranean had been familiar, 
had not been entirely lost. There was a revival of stained 
glass-making and soon the windows of the Gothic churches 
told the stories of the Holy Book in little bits of brilliantly 
coloured window-pane, which were caught in a long frame- 
work of lead. 

Behold, therefore, the new and glorious house of God, 
filled with an eager multitude, "living" its religion as no people 
have ever done either before or since! Nothing is considered 
too good or too costly or too wondrous for this House of God 
and Home of Man. The sculptors, who since the destruction 
of the Roman Empire have been out of employment, haltingly 
return to their noble art. Portals and pillars and buttresses 
and cornices are all covered with carven images of Our Lord 
and the blessed Saints. The embroiderers too are set to work 
to make tapestries for the walls. The jewellers offer their 
highest art that the shrine of the altar may be worthy of com- 
plete adoration. Even the painter does his best. Poor man, 
he is greatly handicapped by lack of a suitable medium. 

And thereby hangs a story. 

The Romans of the early Christian period had covered the 



ART 439 

floors and the walls of their temples and houses with mosaics ; 
pictures made of coloured bits of glass. But this art had been 
exceedingly difficult. It gave the painter no chance to express 
all he wanted to say, as all children know who have ever tried to 
make figures out of coloured blocks of wood. The art of 
mosaic painting therefore died out during the late Middle 
Ages except in Russia, where the Byzantine mosaic painters 
had found a refuge after the fall of Constantinople and con- 
tinued to ornament the walls of the orthodox churches until 
the day of the Bolsheviki, when there was an end to the build- 
ing of churches. 

Of course, the mediaeval painter could mix his colours with 
the water of the wet plaster which was put upon the walls of 
the churches. This method of painting upon "fresh plaster" 
(which was generally called "fresco" or "fresh" painting) 
was very popular for many centuries. To-day, it is as rare 
as the art of painting miniatures in manuscripts and among 
the hundreds of artists of our modern cities there is perhaps 
one who can handle this medium successfully. But during the 
Middle Ages there was no other way and the artists were 
"fresco" workers for lack of something better. The method 
however had certain great disadvantages. Very often the 
plaster came off the walls after only a few years, or dampness 
spoiled the pictures, just as dampness will spoil the pattern 
of our wall paper. People tried every imaginable expedient 
to get away from this plaster background. They tried to mix 
their colours with wine and vinegar and with honey and with 
the sticky white of egg, but none of these methods were satis- 
factory. For more than a thousand years these experiments 
continued. In painting pictures upon the parchment leaves 
of manuscripts the mediaeval artists were very successful. But 
when it came to covering large spaces of wood or stone with 
paint which would stick, they did not succeed very well. 

At last, during the first half of the fifteenth century, the 
problem was solved in the southern Netherlands by Jan and 
Hubert van Eyck. The famous Flemish brothers mixed their 
paint with specially prepared oils and this allowed them to use 



440 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

wood and canvass or stone or anything else as a background for 
their pictures. 

But by this time the religious ardour of the early Middle 
Ages was a thing of the past. The rich burghers of the cities 
were succeeding the bishops as patrons of the arts. And as 
art invariably follows the full dinner-pail, the artists now began 
to work for these worldly employers and painted pictures for 
kings, for grand-dukes and for rich bankers. Within a very 
short time, the new method of painting with oil spread through 
Europe and in every country there developed a school of 
special painting which showed the characteristic tastes of the 
people for whom these portraits and landscapes were made. 

In Spain, for example, Velasquez painted court-dwarfs 
and the weavers of the royal tapestry-factories, and all sorts 
of persons and subjects connected with the king and his court. 
But in Holland, Rembrandt and Frans Hals and Vermeer 
painted the barnyard of the merchant's house, and they painted 
his rather dowdy wife and his healthy but bumptious children 
and the ships which had brought him his wealth. In Italy on 
the other hand, where the Pope remained the largest patron 
of the arts, Michelangelo and Correggio continued to paint 
Madonnas and Saints, while in England, where the aristocracy 
was very rich and powerful and in France where the 
kings had become uppermost in the state, the artists pamted 
distinguished gentlemen who were members of the government, 
and very lovely ladies who were friends of His Majesty. 

The great change in painting, which came about with the 
neglect of the old church and the rise of a new class in society, 
was reflected in all other forms of art. The invention of print- 
ing had made it possible for authors to win fame and reputa- 
tion by writing books for the multitudes. In this way arose 
the profession of the novehst and the illustrator. But the 
people who had money enough to buy the new books were not 
the sort who liked to sit at home of nights, looking at the ceiling 
or just sitting. They wanted to be amused. The few minstrels 
of the Middle Ages were not sufficient to cover the demand for 
entertainment. For the first time since the early Greek city- 



ART 441 

states of two thousand years before, the professional play- 
wright had a chance to ply his trade. The Middle Ages had 
known the theatre merely as part of certain church celebra- 
tions. The tragedies of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
turies had told the story of the suffering of our Lord. But 
during the sixteenth century the worldly theatre made its re- 
appearance. It is true that, at first, the position of the pro- 
fessional playwright and actor was not a very high one. 
William Shakespeare was regarded as a sort of circus-fellow 
who amused his neighbours with his tragedies and comedies. 
But when he died in the year 1616 he had begun to enjoy the 
respect of his neighbours and actors were no longer subjects 
of police supervision. 

William's contemporary. Lope de Vega, the incredible 
Spaniard who wrote no less than 1800 worldly and 400 reli- 
gious plays, was a person of rank who received the papal ap- 
proval upon his work. A century later, Moliere, the French- 
man, was deemed worthy of the companionship of none less 
than King Louis XIV. 

Since then, the theatre has enjoyed an ever increasing 
affection on the part of the people. To-day a "theatre" is part 
of every well-regulated city, and the "silent drama" of the 
movies has penetrated to the tiniest of our prairie hamlets. 

Another art, however, was to become the most popular of 
all. That was music. Most of the old art-forms demanded a 
great deal of technical skill. It takes years and years of prac- 
tice before our clumsy hand is able to follow the commands of 
the brain and reproduce our vision upon canvas or in marble. 
It takes a life-time to learn how to act or how to write a good 
novel. And it takes a great deal of training on the part of the 
public to appreciate the best in painting and writing and 
sculpture. But almost any one, not entirely tone-deaf, can 
follow a tune and almost everybody can get enjoyment out of 
some sort of music. The Middle Ages had heard a little music 
but it had been entirely the music of the church. The holy 
chants were subject to very severe laws of rhythm and harmony 



442 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



and soon these became monotonous. Besides, they could not 
well be sung in the street or in the market-place. 

The Renaissance changed this. Music once more came 
into its own as the best friend of man, both in his happiness and 
in his sorrows. 

The Egyptians and the Babylonians and the ancient Jews 
had all been great lovers of music. They had even combined 
different instruments into regular orchestras. But the Greeks 
had frowned upon this barbaric foreign noise. They liked to 
hear a man recite the stately poetry of Homer and Pindar. 
They allowed him to accompany himself upon the lyre (the 
poorest of all stringed instru- 
ments ) . That was as far as any 
one could go without incurring 
the risk of popular disapproval. 
The Romans on the other hand 
had loved orchestral music at 
their dinners and parties and 
they had invented most of the 
instruments which (in very 
modified form) we use to-day. 
The early church had despised 
this music which smacked too 
much of the wicked pagan 
world which had just been de- 
stroyed. A few songs rendered 
by the entire congregation were 
all the bishops of the third and 
fourth centuries would tolerate. As the congregation was apt 
to sing dreadfully out of key without the guidance of an in- 
strument, the church had afterwards allowed the use of an 
organ, an invention of the second century of our era which con- 
sisted of a combination of the old pipes of Pan and a pair of 
bellows. 

Then came the great migrations. The last of the Roman 
musicians were either killed or became tramp-fiddlers going 
from city to city and playing in the street, and begging for 
pennies like the harpist on a modern ferry-boat. 





^ 




^^sl 


^ i^jSSgjT 


^^^ 




Z/»- 



THE TROUBADOUR 



ART 443 

But the revival of a more worldly civilisation in the cities 
of the late Middle Ages had created a new demand for musi- 
cians. Instrimients like the horn, which had been used only 
as signal-instruments for hunting and fighting, were remodelled 
until they could reproduce sounds which were agreeable in the 
dance-hall and in the banqueting room. A bow strung with 
horse-hair was used to play the old-fashioned guitar and be- 
fore the end of the Middle Ages this six-stringed instrument 
(the most ancient of all string-instruments which dates back 
to Egypt and Assyria) had grown into our modern four- 
stringed fiddle which Stradivarius and the other Italian violin- 
makers of the eighteenth century brought to the height of per- 
fection. 

And finally the modern piano was invented, the most wide- 
spread of all musical instruments, which has followed man into 
the wilderness of the jungle and the ice-fields of Greenland. 
The organ had been the first of all keyed instruments but the 
performer always depended upon the co-operation of some one 
who worked the bellows, a job which nowadays is done by elec- 
tricity. The musicians therefore looked for a handier and less 
circumstantial instrument to assist them in training the pupils 
of the many church choirs. During the great eleventh century, 
Guido, a Benedictine monk of the town of Arezzo (the 
birthplace of the poet Petrarch) gave us our modern system 
of musical annotation. Some time during that century, when 
there was a great deal of popular interest in music, the first 
instrument with both keys and strings was built. It must 
have sounded as tinkly as one of those tiny children's pianos 
which you can buy at every toy-shop. In the city of Vienna, 
the town where the strolling musicians of the Middle Ages 
(who had been classed with jugglers and card sharps) had 
formed the first separate Guild of Musicians in the year 1288, 
the little monochord was developed into something which we 
can recognise as the direct ancestor of our modern Steinway. 
From Austria the "clavichord" as it was usually called in those 
days (because it had "claves" or keys) went to Italy. There 
it was perfected into the "spinet" which was so called after 



444 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

the inventor, Giovanni Spinetti of Venice. At last during 
the eighteenth century, some time between 1709 and 1720, 
Bartolomeo Cristofori made a "clavier" which allowed the 
performer to play both loudly and softly or as it was said in 
Italian, "piano" and "forte." This instrument with certain 
changes became our "pianoforte" or piano. 

Then for the first time the world possessed an easy and con- 
venient instrument which could be mastered in a couple of years 
and did not need the eternal tuning of harps and fiddles and 
was much pleasanter to the ears than the medieeval tubas, clari- 
nets, trombones and oboes. Just as the phonograph has given 
millions of modern people their first love of music so did the 
early "pianoforte" carry the knowledge of music into much 
wider circles. Music became part of the education of every well- 
bred man and woman. Princess and rich merchants maintained 
private orchestras. The musician ceased to be a wandering 
"jongleur" and became a highly valued member of the com- 
munity. Music was added to the dramatic performances of 
the theatre and out of this practice, grew our modern Opera. 
Originally only a few very rich princes could afford the ex- 
penses of an "opera troupe." But as the taste for this sort of 
entertainment grew, many cities built their own theatres where 
Italian and afterwards German operas were given to the un- 
limited joy of the whole community with the exception of a few 
sects of very strict Christians who still regarded music with 
deep suspicion as something which was too lovely to be entirely 
good for the soul. 

By the middle of the eighteenth century the musical life 
of Europe was in full swing. Then there came forward a 
man who was greater than all others, a simple organist of the 
Thomas Church of Leipzig, by the name of Johann Sebastian 
Bach. In his compositions for every known instrument, from 
comic songs and popular dances to the most stately of sacred 
hymns and oratorios, he laid the foundation for all our modern 
music. When he died in the year 1750 he was succeeded by 
Mozart, who created musical fabrics of sheer loveliness which 
remind us of lace that has been woven out of harmony and 



ART 446 

rhythm. Then came Ludwig van Beethoven, the most tragic 
of men, who gave us our modern orchestra, yet heard none of 
his own compositions because he was deaf, as the result of a 
cold contracted during his years of poverty. 

Beethoven lived through the period of the great French 
Revolution. Full of hope for a new and glorious day, he had 
dedicated one of his symphonies to Napoleon. But he lived 
to regret the hour. When he died in the year 1827, Napoleon 
was gone and the French Revolution was gone, but the steam 
engine had come and was filling the world with a sound that 
had nothing in comimon with the dreams of the Fifth Sym- 
phony. 

Indeed, the new order of steam and iron and coal and large 
factories had little use for art, for painting and sculpture and 
poetry and music. The old protectors of the arts, the Church 
and the princes and the merchants of the Middle Ages and the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no longer existed. The 
leaders of the new industrial world were too busy and had too 
little education to bother about etchings and sonatas and bits 
of carved ivory, not to speak of the men who created those 
things, and who were of no practical use to the community in 
which they lived. And the workmen in the factories listened 
to the drone of their engines until they too had lost all taste 
for the melody of the flute or fiddle of their peasant ancestry. 
The arts became the step-children of the new industrial era. 
Art and Life became entirely separated. Whatever paintings 
had been left, were dying a slow death in the museums. And 
music became a monopoly of a few "virtuosi" who took the 
music away from the home and carried it to the concert-hall. 

But steadily, although slowly, the arts are coming back into 
their own. People begin to understand that Rembrandt and 
Beethoven and Rodin are the true prophets and leaders of 
their race and that a world without art and happiness resem- 
bles a nursery without laughter. 



COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR 



A CHAPTER WHICH OUGHT TO GIVE YOU A 
GREAT DEAL OF POLITICAL INFORMA- 
TION ABOUT THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, BUT 
WHICH REALLY CONTAINS SEVERAL EX- 
PLANATIONS AND A FEW APOLOGIES 

If I had known how difficult it was to write a History of 
the World, I should never have undertaken the task. Of course, 
any one possessed of enough industry to lose himself for half 
a dozen years in the musty stacks of a library, can compile a 
ponderous tome which gives an account of the events in every 
land during every century. But that was not the purpose of 
the present book. The publishers wanted to print a history 
that should have rhythm — a story which galloped rather than 
walked. And now that I have almost finished I discover that 
certain chapters gallop, that others wade slowly through the 
dreary sands of long forgotten ages — that a few parts do not 
make any progress at all, while still others indulge in a veri- 
table jazz of action and romance. I did not like this and I sug- 
gested that we destroy the whole manuscript and begin once 
more from the beginning. This, however, the publishers would 
not allow. 

As the next best solution of my difficulties, I took the type- 
written pages to a number of charitable friends and asked them 
to read what I had said, and give me the benefit of their advice. 
The experience was rather disheartening. Each and every 

446 



COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR 



44T 



man had his own prejudices and his own hobbies and prefer- 
ences. They all wanted to know why, where and how I dared 
to omit their pet nation, their pet statesman, or even their most 
beloved criminal. With some of them. Napoleon and Jenghiz 
Khan were candidates for high honours. I explained that I 
had tried very hard to be fair to Napoleon, but that in my 
estimation he was greatly inferior to such men as George 
Washington, Gustavus Wasa, Augustus, Hanmiurabi or 
Lincoln, and a score of others all of whom were obliged to 




THE PIONEER 

content themselves with a few paragraphs, from sheer lack of 
space. As for Jenghiz Khan, I only recognise his superior 
ability in the field of wholesale murder and I did not intend to 
give him any more publicity than I could help. 

"This is very well as far as it goes," said the next critic, 
"but how about the Puritans? We are celebrating the ter- 
centenary of their arrival at Plymouth. They ought to have 
more space." My answer was that if I were writing a history 
of America, the Puritans would get fully one half of the first 
twelve chapters; that however this was a history of mankind 
and that the event on Plymouth rock was not a matter of far- 



448 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

reaching international importance until many centuries later; 
that the United States had been founded by thirteen colonies 
and not by a single one ; that the most prominent leaders of the 
first twenty years of our history had been from Virginia, from 
Pennsylvania, and from the island of Nevis, rather than from 
Massachusetts; and that therefore the Puritans ought to con- 
tent themselves wih a page of print and a special map. 

Next came the prehistoric specialist. Why in the name of 
the great Tyranosaur had I not devoted more space to the 
wonderful race of Cro-Magnon men, who had developed such 
a high stage of civilisation 10,000 years ago? 

Indeed, and why not ? The reason is simple. I do not take 
as much stock in the perfection of these early races as some of 
our most noted anthropologists seem to do. Rousseau and 
the philosophers of the eighteenth century created the "noble 
savage" who was supposed to have dwelt in a state of perfect 
happiness during the beginning of time. Our modern scien- 
tists have discarded the "noble savage," so dearly beloved by 
our grandfathers, and they have replaced him by the "splendid 
savage" of the French Valleys who 35,000 years ago made an 
end to the universal rule of the low-browed and low-living 
brutes of the Neanderthal and other Germanic neighbourhoods. 
They have shown us the elephants the Cro-Magnon painted 
and the statues he carved and they have surrounded him with 
much glory. 

I do not mean to say that they are wrong. But I hold that 
we know by far too little of this entire period to re-construct 
that early west-European society with any degree (however 
humble) of accuracy. And I would rather not state certain 
things than run the risk of stating certain things that were not 
so. 

Then there were other critics, who accused me of direct 
unfairness. Why did I leave out such countries as Ireland 
and Bulgaria and Siam while I dragged in such other coun- 
tries as Holland and Iceland and Switzerland? My answer 
was that I did not drag in any countries. They pushed them- 
selves in by main force of circumstances, and I simply could 



COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR 449 

not keep them out. And in order that my point may be under- 
stood, let me state the basis upon which active membership to 
this book of history was considered. 

There was but one rule. "Did the country or the person 
in question produce a new idea or perform an original act 
without which the history of the entire human race would have 
been different?" It was not a question of personal taste. It 
was a matter of cool, almost mathematical judgment. No race 
ever played a more picturesque role in history than the Mon- 
golians, and no race, from the point of view of achievement or 
intelligent progress, was of less value to the rest of mankind. 

The career of Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian, is full of dra- 
matic episodes. But as far as we are concerned, he might just 
as well never have existed at all. In the same way, the history 
of the Dutch Republic is not interesting because once upon a 
time the sailors of de Ruyter went fishing in the river Thames, 
but rather because of the fact that this small mud-bank along 
the shores of the North Sea offered a hospitable asylum to all 
sorts of strange people who had all sorts of queer ideas upon 
all sorts of very unpopular subjects. 

It is quite true that Athens or Florence, during the hey-day 
of their glory, had only one tenth of the population of Kansas 
City. But our present civilisation would be very different 
had neither of these two little cities of the Mediterranean basin 
existed. And the same (with due apologies to the good people 
of Wyandotte County) can hardly be said of this busy me- 
tropolis on the Missouri River. 

And since I am being very personal, allow me to state one 
other fact. 

When we visit a doctor, we find out before hand whether 
he is a surgeon or a diagnostician or a homeopath or a faith 
healer, for we want to know from what angle he will look at 
our complaint. We ought to be as careful in the choice of our 
historians as we are in the selection of our physicians. We 
think, "Oh well, history is history," and let it go at that. But 
the writer who was educated in a strictly Presbyterian house- 
hold somewhere in the backwoods of Scotland will look differ- 



450 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

ently upon every question of human relationships from his 
neighbour who as a child, was dragged to listen to the brilliant 
exhortations of Robert Ingersoll, the enemy of all revealed 
Devils. In due course of time, both men may forget their 
early training and never again visit either church or lecture 
hall. But the influence of these impressionable years stays 
with them and they cannot escape showing it in whatever they 
write or say or do. 

In the preface to this book, I told you that I would not be 
an infallible guide and now that we have almost reached the 
end, I repeat the warning. I was born and educated in an 
atmosphere of the old-fashioned liberalism which had followed 
the discoveries of Darwin and the other pioneers of the nine- 
teenth century. As a child, I happened to spend most of my 
waking hours with an uncle who was a great collector of the 
books written by Montaigne, the great French essayist of the 
sixteenth century. Because I was born in Rotterdam and 
educated in the city of Gouda, I ran continually across 
Erasmus and for some unknown reason this great exponent 
of tolerance took hold of my intolerant self. Later I discov- 
ered Anatole France and my first experience with the English 
language came about through an accidental encounter with 
Thackeray's "Henry Esmond," a story which made more im- 
pression upon me than any other book in the English language. 

If I had been born in a pleasant middle western city I prob- 
ably should have a certain affection for the hymns which I had 
heard in my childhood. But my earliest recollection of music 
goes back to the afternoon when my Mother took me to hear 
nothing less than a Bach fugue. And the mathematical per- 
fection of the great Protestant master influenced me to such 
an extent that I cannot hear the usual hymns of our prayer- 
meetings without a feeling of intense agony and direct pain. 

Again, if I had been born in Italy and had been warmed 
by the sunshine of the happy valley of the Arno, I might love 
many colourful and sunny pictures which now leave me indif- 
ferent because I got my first artistic impressions in a country 
where the rare sun beats down upon the rain-soaked land with 



COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR 



451 



almost cruel brutality and throws everything into violent con- 
trasts of dark and hght. 

I state these few facts deliberately that you may know 
the personal bias of the man who wrote this history and may 
understand his point-of-view. The bibliography at the end of 
this book, which represents all sorts of opinions and views, will 
allow you to compare my ideas with those of other people. 
And in this way, you will be able to reach your own final con- 
clusions with a greater possible degree of fairness than would 
otherwise be possible. 




THE CONQUEST OF THE WEST 

After this short but necessary excursion, we return to the 
history of the last fifty years. Many things happened during 
this period but very little occurred which at the time seemed 
to be of paramount importance. The majority of the greater 
powers ceased to be mere political agencies and became large 
business enterprises. They built railroads. They founded and 
subsidized steam-ship lines to all parts of the world. They 
connected their different possessions with telegraph wires. 
And they steadily increased their holdings in other continents. 
Every available bit of African or Asiatic territory was claimed 



452 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

by one of the rival powers. France became a colonial nation 
with interests in Algiers and Madagascar and Annam and 
Tonkin (in eastern Asia). Germany claimed parts of south- 
west and east Africa, built settlements in Kameroon on the 
west coast of Africa and in New Guinea and many of the 
islands of the Pacific, and used the murder of a few missionaries 
as a welcome excuse to take the harbour of Kiaochau on the 
Yellow Sea in China. Italy tried her luck in Abyssinia, was 
disastrously defeated by the soldiers of the Negus, and con- 
soled herself by occupying the Turkish possessions in Tripoli 
in northern Africa. Russia, having occupied all of Siberia, 
took Port Arthur away from China. Japan, having defeated 
China in the war of 1895, occupied the island of Formosa and 
in the year 1905 began to lay claim to the entire empire of 
Corea. In the year 1883 England, the largest colonial empire 
the world has ever seen, undertook to "protect" Egypt. She 
performed this task most efficiently and to the great material 
benefit of that much neglected country, which ever since the 
opening of the Suez canal in 1868 had been threatened with a 
foreign invasion. During the next thirty years she fought a 
number of colonial wars in different parts of the world and in 
1902 (after three years of bitter fighting) she conquered the 
independent Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange 
Free State. Meanwhile she had encouraged Cecil Rhodes to 
lay the foundations for a great African state, which reached 
from the Cape almost to the mouth of the Nile, and had faith- 
fully picked up such islands or provinces as had been left with- 
out a European owner. 

The shrewd king of Belgium, by name Leopold, used 
the discoveries of Henry Stanley to found the Congo Free 
State in the year 1885. Originally this gigantic tropical em- 
pire was an "absolute monarchy." But after many years of 
scandalous mismanagement, it was annexed by the Belgian 
people who made it a colony (in the year 1908) and abolished 
the terrible abuses which had been tolerated by this very un- 
scrupulous Majesty, who cared nothing for the fate of the 
natives as long as he got his ivory and rubber. 



COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR 453 

As for the United States, they had so much land that they 
desired no further territory. But the terrible misrule of 
Cuba, one of the last of the Spanish possessions in the western 
hemisphere, practically forced the Washington government to 
take action. After a short and rather uneventful war, the 
Spaniards were driven out of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the 
Philippines, and the two latter became colonies of the United 
States. 

This economic development of the world was perfectly 
natural. The increasing number of factories in England and 
France and Germany needed an ever increasing amount of raw 
materials and the equally increasing number of European 
workers needed an ever increasing amount of food. Every- 
where the cry was for more and for richer markets, for more 
easily accessible coal mines and iron mines and rubber planta- 
tions and oil-wells, for greater supplies of wheat and grain. 

The purely political events of the European continent 
dwindled to mere insignificance in the eyes of men who were 
making plans for steamboat lines on Victoria Nyanza or 
for railroads through the interior of Shantung. They knew 
that many European questions still remained to be settled, but 
they did not bother, and through sheer indifference and care- 
lessness they bestowed upon their descendants a terrible inher- 
itance of hate and misery. For untold centuries the south-east- 
ern corner of Europe had been the scene of rebellion and blood- 
shed. During the seventies of the last century the people of 
Serbia and Bulgaria and Montenegro and Roumania were once 
more trying to gain their freedom and the Turks, (with the 
support of many of the western powers), were trying to pre- 
vent this. 

After a period of particularly atrocious massacres in Bul- 
garia in the year 1876, the Russian people lost all patience. 
The Government was forced to intervene just as President Mc- 
Kinley was obliged to go to Cuba and stop the shooting-squads 
of General Weyler in Havana. In April of the year 1877 the 
Russian armies crossed the Danube, stormed the Shipka pass, 
and after the capture of Plevna, marched southward until they 



464 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

reached the gates of Constantinople. Turkey appealed for 
help to England. There were many English people who de- 
nounced their government when it took the side of the Sultan. 
But Disraeli (who had just made Queen Victoria Empress of 
India and who loved the picturesque Turks while he hated the 
Russians who were brutally cruel to the Jewish people within 
their frontiers) decided to interfere. Russia was forced to 
conclude the peace of San Stefano (1878) and the question of 
the Balkans was left to a Congi*ess which convened at Berlin 
in June and July of the same year. 

This famous conference was entirely dominated by the per- 
sonality of Disraeli. Even Bismarck feared the clever old 
man with his well-oiled curly hair and his supreme arrogance, 
tempered by a cynical sense of humor and a marvellous gift 
for flattery. At Berlin the British prime-minister carefully 
watched over the fate of his friends the Turks. Montenegro, 
Serbia and Roumania were recognised as independent king- 
doms. The principality of Bulgaria was given a semi-inde- 
pendent status under Prince Alexander of Battenberg, a 
nephew of Tsar Alexander II. But none of those countries 
were given the chance to develop their powers and their re- 
sources as they would have been able to do, had England been 
less anxious about the fate of the Sultan, whose domains were 
necessary to the safety of the British Empire as a bulwark 
against further Russian aggression. 

To make matters worse, the congress allowed Austria to 
take Bosnia and Herzegovina away from the Turks to be 
"administered" as part of the Habsburg domains. It is true 
that Austria made an excellent job of it. The neglected prov- 
inces were as well managed as the best of the British colonies, 
and that is saying a great deal. But they were inhabited by 
many Serbians. In older days they had been part of the great 
Serbian empire of Stephan Dushan, who early in the four- 
teenth century had defended western Europe against the inva- 
sions of the Turks and whose capital of Uskub had been a 
centre of civilisation one hundred and fifty years before Colum- 
bus discovered the new lands of the west. The Serbians remem- 



COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR 455 

bered their ancient glory as who would not? They resented 
the presence of the Austrians in two provinces, which, so they 
felt, were theirs by every right of tradition. 

And it was in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, that the 
archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, was mur- 
dered on June 28 of the year 1914. The assassin was a Serb- 
ian student who had acted from purely patriotic motives. 

But the blame for this terrible catastrophe which was the 
immediate, though not the only cause of the Great World War 
did not lie with the half-crazy Serbian boy or his Austrian 
victim. It must be traced back to the days of the famous 
Berlin Conference when Europe was too busy building a ma- 
terial civilisation to care about the aspirations and the dreams 
of a forgotten race in a dreary corner of the old Balkan 
peninsula. 



A NEW WORLD 



THE GREAT WAR WHICH WAS REALLY THE 

STRUGGLE FOR A NEW AND 

BETTER WORLD 

The Marquis de Condorcet was one of the noblest charac- 
ters among the small group of honest enthusiasts who were 
responsible for the outbreak of the great French Revolution. 
He had devoted his life to the cause of the poor and the unfor- 
tunate. He had been one of the assistants of d'Alembert and 
Diderot when they wrote their famous Encyclopedic. During 
the first years of the Revolution he had been the leader of the 
Moderate wing of the Convention. 

His tolerance, his kindliness, his stout common sense, had 
made him an object of suspicion when the treason of the king 
and the court clique had given the extreme radicals their chance 
to get hold of the government and kill their opponents. 
Condorcet was declared "hors du loi," or outlawed, an outcast 
who was henceforth at the mercy of every true patriot. His 
friends oifered to hide him at their own peril. Condorcet 
refused to accept their sacrifice. He escaped and tried to reach 
his home, where he might be safe. After three nights in the 
open, torn and bleeding, he entered an inn and asked for some 
food. The suspicious yokels searched him and in his pockets 
they found a copy of Horace, the Latin poet. This showed 
that their prisoner was a man of gentle breeding and had no 
business upon the highroads at a time when every educated 

456 



A NEW WORLD 467 

person was regarded as an enemy of the Revolutionary state. 
They took Condorcet and they bound him and they gagged 
him and they threw him into the village lock-up, but in the 
morning when the soldiers came to drag him back to Paris and 
cut his head off, behold ! he was dead. 

This man who had given all and had received nothing had 
good reason to despair of the human race. But he has written 
a few sentences which ring as true to-day as they did one 
hundred and thirty years ago. I repeat them here for your 
benefit. 

"Nature has set no limits to our hopes," he wrote, "and 
the picture of the human race, now freed from its chains and 




WAR 

marching with a firm tread on the road of truth and virtue 
and happiness, oifers to the philosopher a spectacle which 
consoles him for the errors, for the crimes and the injustices 
which still pollute and afflict this earth." 

The world has just passed through an agony of pain com- 
pared to which the French Revolution was a mere incident. 
The shock has been so great that it has killed the last spark of 
hope in the breasts of millions of men. They were chanting a 
hymn of progress, and four years of slaughter followed their 
prayers for peace. "Is it worth while," so they ask, "to work 
and slave for the benefit of creatures who have not yet passed 
beyond the stage of the earliest cave men?" 

There is but one answer. 

That answer is "Yes I" 



468 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

The World War was a terrible calamity. But it did not 
mean the end of things. On the contrary it brought about the 
coming of a new day. 

It is easy to write a history of Greece and Rome or the 
Middle Ages. The actors who played their parts upon that 
long-forgotten stage are all dead. We can criticize them with 
a cool head. The audience that applauded their efforts has dis- 
persed. Our remarks cannot possibly hurt their feelings. 

But it is very difficult to give a true account of contempo- 
rary events. The problems that fill the minds of the people 
with whom we pass through life, are our own problems, and 
they hurt us too much or they please us too well to be de- 
scribed with that fairness which is necessary when we are writ- 
ing history and not blowing the trumpet of propaganda. All 
the same I shall endeavour to tell you why I agree with poor 
Condorcet when he expressed his firm faith in a better future. 

Often before have I warned you against the false impres- 
sion which is created by the use of our so-called historical 
epochs which divide the story of man into four parts, the an- 
cient world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Refor- 
mation, and Modern Time. The last of these terms is the most 
dangerous. The word "modern" impHes that we, the people 
of the twentieth century, are at the top of human achievement. 
Fifty years ago the liberals of England who followed the lead- 
ership of Gladstone felt that the problem of a truly representa- 
tive and democratic form of government had been solved for- 
ever by the second great Reform Bill, which gave workmen 
an equal share in the government with their employers. When 
Disraeli and his conservative friends talked of a dangerous 
"leap in the dark" they answered "No." They felt certain of 
their cause and trusted that henceforth* all classes of society 
would co-operate to make the government of their common 
country a success. Since then many things have happened, 
and the few liberals who are still alive begin to understand 
that they were mistaken. 

There is no definite answer to any historical problem. 

Every generation must fight the good fight anew or perish 



A NEW WORLD 459 

as those sluggish animals of the prehistoric world have 
perished. 

If you once get hold of this great truth you will get a new 
and much broader view of life. Then, go one step further 
and try to imagine yourself in the position of your own great- 
great-grandchildren who will take your place in the year 
10,000. They too will learn history. But what will they 
think of those short four thousand years during which we have 
kept a written record of our actions and of our thoughts? 
They will think of Napoleon as a contemporary of Tiglath 
Pileser, the Assyrian conqueror. Perhaps they will confuse 
him with Jenghiz Khan or Alexander the Macedonian. The 
great war which has just come to an end will appear in the light 
of that long commercial conflict which settled the supremacy 
of the Mediterranean when Rome and Carthage fought during 
one hundred and twenty-eight years for the mastery of the sea. 
The Balkan troubles of the 19th century (the struggle for 
freedom of Serbia and Greece and Bulgaria and Montenegro) 
to them will seem a continuation of the disordered conditions 
caused by the Great Migrations. They will look at pictures 
of the Rheims cathedral which only yesterday was destroyed 
by German guns as we look upon a photograph of the Acro- 
polis ruined two hundred and fifty years ago during a war 
between the Turks and the Venetians. They will regard the 
fear of death, which is still coromon among many people, as a 
childish superstition which was perhaps natural in a race of 
men who had burned witches as late as the year 1692. Even 
our hospitals and our laboratories and our operating rooms 
of which we are so proud will look like slightly improved 
workshops of alchemists and mediseval surgeons. 

And the reason for all this is simple. We modern men and 
women are not "modern" at all. On the contrary we still 
belong to the last generations of the cave-dwellers. The foun- 
dation for a new era was laid but yesterday. The human race 
was given its first chance to become truly civilised when it took 
courage to question all things and made "knowledge and un- 
derstanding" the foundation upon which to create a more 



460 



THE STORY OF MANKIND 



reasonable and sensible society of human beings. The Great 
War was the "growing-pain" of this new world. 

For a long time to come people will write mighty books to 
prove that this or that or the other person brought about the 
war. The Socialists will publish volumes in which they will ac- 




THE SPREAD OF THE IMPERIAL IDEA 



A NEW WORLD 461 

cuse the "capitalists" of having brought about the war for "com- 
mercial gain." The capitalists will answer that they lost infi- 
nitely more through the war than they made — that their chil- 
dren were among the first to go and fight and be killed — and 
they will show how in every country the bankers tried their 
very best to avert the outbreak of hostilities. French his- 
torians will go through the register of German sins from the 
days of Charlemagne until the days of William of Hohen- 
zollern and German historians will return the compliment and 
will go through the list of French horrors from the days of 
Charlemagne until the days of President Poincare. And 
then they will establish to their own satisfaction that the other 
fellow was guilty of "causing the war." Statesmen, dead and 
not yet dead, in all countries will take to their typewriters and 
they will explain how they tried to avert hostilities and how 
their wicked opponents forced them into it. 

The historian, a hundred years hence, will not bother about 
these apologies and vindications. He will understand the real 
nature of the underlying causes and he will know that personal 
ambitions and personal wickedness and personal greed had very 
little to do with the final outburst. The original mistake, which 
was responsible for all this misery, was committed when our 
scientists began to create a new world of steel and iron and 
chemistry and electricity and forgot that the human mind is 
slower than the proverbial turtle, is lazier than the well-known 
sloth, and marches from one hundred to three hundred years 
behind the small group of courageous leaders. 

A Zulu in a frock coat is still a Zulu. A dog trained to ride 
a bicycle and smoke a pipe is still a dog. And a human being 
with the mind of a sixteenth century tradesman driving a 1921 
Rolls-Royce is still a human being with the mind of a sixteenth 
century tradesman. 

If you do not understand this at first, read it again. It 
will become clearer to you in a moment and it will explain 
many things that have happened these last six years. 

Perhaps I may give you another, more familiar, example, 
to show you what I mean. In the movie theatres, jokes and 



462 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

funny remarks are often thrown upon the screen. Watch the 
audience the next time you have a chance. A few people seem 
ahnost to inhale the words. It takes them but a second to read 
the lines. Others are a bit slower. Still others take from 
twenty to thirty seconds. Finally those men and women who 
do not read any more than they can help, get the point when 
the brighter ones among the audience have already begun to 
decipher the next cut-in. It is not diiFerent in human life, 
as I shall now show you. 

In a former chapter I have told you how the idea of the 
Roman Empire continued to live for a thousand years after 
the death of the last Roman Emperor. It caused the establish- 
ment of a large number of "imitation empires." It gave the 
Bishops of Rome a chance to make themselves the head of the 
entire church, because they represented the idea of Roman 
world-supremacy. It drove a number of perfectly harmless 
barbarian chieftains into a career of crime and endless war- 
fare because they were for ever under the spell of this magic 
word "Rome." All these people, Popes, Emperors and plain 
fighting men were not very different from you or me. But 
they lived in a world where the Roman tradition was a vital 
issue — something living — something which was remembered 
clearly both by the father and the son and the grandson. And 
so they struggled and sacrificed themselves for a cause which 
to-day would not find a dozen recruits. 

In still another chapter I have told you how the great reli- 
gious wars took place more than a century after the first open 
act of the Reformation and if you will compare the chapter 
on the Thirty Years War with that on Inventions, you will see 
that this ghastly butchery took place at a time when the first 
clumsy steam engines were already puffing in the laboratories 
of a number of French and German and English scientists. 
But the world at large took no interest in these strange con- 
traptions, and went on with a grand theological discussion 
which to-day causes yawns, but no anger. 

And so it goes. A thousand years from now, the historian 
will use the same words about Europe of the out-going nine- 



A NEW WORLD 463 

teenth century, and he will see how men were engaged upon 
terrific nationalistic struggles while the laboratories all around 
them were filled with serious folk who cared not one whit for 
politics as long as they could force nature to surrender a few 
more of her million secrets. 

You will gradually begin to understand what I am driving 
at. The engineer and the scientist and the chemist, within a 
single generation, filled Europe and America and Asia with 
their vast machines, with their telegraphs, their flying machines, 
their coal-tar products. They created a new world in which 
time and space were reduced to complete insignificance. They 
invented new products and they made these so cheap that al- 
most every one could buy them. I have told you all this before 
but it certainly will bear repeating. 

To keep the ever increasing number of factories going, the 
owners, who had also become the rulers of the land, needed raw 
materials and coal. Especially coal. Meanwhile the mass of 
the people were still thinking in terms of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries and clinging to the old notions of the 
state as a dynastic or political organisation. This clumsy me- 
diaeval institution was then suddenly called upon to handle the 
highly modern problems of a mechanical and industrial world. 
It did its best, according to the rules of the game which had 
been laid down centuries before. The different states created 
enormous armies and gigantic navies which were used for the 
purpose of acquiring new possessions in distant lands. Where- 
ever there was a tiny bit of land left, there arose an English or 
a French or a German or a Russian colony. If the natives 
objected, they were killed. In most cases they did not object, 
and were allowed to live peacefully, provided they did not 
interfere with the diamond mines or the coal mines or the oil 
mines or the gold mines or the rubber plantations, and they 
derived many benefits from the foreign occupation. 

Sometimes it happened that two states in search of raw 
materials wanted the same piece of land at the same time. 
Then there was a war. This occurred fifteen years ago when 
Russia and Japan fought for the possession of certain terri- 



464. THE STORY OF MANKIND 

tories which belonged to the Chinese people. Such conflicts, 
however, were the exception. No one really desired to fight. 
Indeed, the idea of fighting with armies and battleships and 
submarines began to seem absurd to the men of the early 20th 
century. They associated the idea of violence with the long- 
ago age of unlimited monarchies and intriguing dynasties. 
Every day they read in their papers of still further inventions, 
of groups of EngHsh and American and German scientists who 
were working together in perfect friendship for the purpose 
of an advance in medicine or in astronomy. They lived in a 
busy world of trade and of commerce and factories. But only 
a few noticed that the development of the state, (of the gigantic 
community of people who recognise certain common ideals,) 
was lagging several hundred years behind. They tried to warn 
the others. But the others were occupied with their own 
affairs. 

I have used so many similes that I must apologise for bring- 
ing in one more. The Ship of State, (that old and trusted 
expression which is ever new and always picturesque,) of the 
Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans and the Venetians 
and the merchant adventurers of the seventeenth century had 
been a sturdy craft, constructed of well-seasoned wood, and 
commanded by officers who knew both their crew and their 
vessel and who understood the limitations of the art of navi- 
gating which had been handed down to them by their ancestors. 

Then came the new age of iron and steel and machinery. 
First one part, then another of the old ship of state was 
changed. Her dimensions were increased. The sails were dis- 
carded for steam. Better living quarters were established, but 
more people were forced to go down into the stoke-hole, and 
while the work was safe and fairly remunerative, they did not 
like it as well as their old and more dangerous job in the rig- 
ging. Finally, and almost imperceptibly, the old wooden 
square-rigger had been transformed into a modern ocean liner. 
But the captain and the mates remained the same. They were 
appointed or elected in the same way as a hundred years be- 
fore. They were taught the same system of navigation which 



A NEW WORLD 465 

had served the mariners of the fifteenth century. In their 
cabins hung the same charts and signal flags which had done 
service in the days of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great. 
In short, they were (through no fault of their own) completely 
incompetent. 

The sea of international politics is not very broad. When 
those Imperial and Colonial liners began to try and outrun 
each other, accidents were bound to happen. They did hap- 
pen. You can still see the wreckage if you venture to pass 
through that part of the ocean. 

And the moral of the story is a simple one. The world is 
in dreadful need of men who will assume the new leadership — 
who will have the courage of their own visions and who will 
recognise clearly that we are only at the beginning of the 
voyage, and have to learn an entirely new system of seaman- 
ship. 

They will have to serve for years as mere apprentices. 
They will have to fight their way to the top against every pos- 
sible form of opposition. When they reach the bridge, mutiny 
of an envious crew may cause their death. But some day, a 
man will arise who will bring the vessel safely to port, and he 
shall be the hero of the ages. 



AS IT EVER SHALL BE 



"The more I think of the problems of our lives, the more I am 

"persuaded that we ought to choose Irony and Pity for our 

"assessors and judges as the ancient Egyptians called upon 

"the Goddess Isis and the Goddess Nephtys on behalf of their 

"dead. 

"Irony and Pity are both of good counsel; the first with her 

"smiles makes life agreeable; the other sanctifies it with her 

"tears. 

"The Irony which I invoke is no cruel Deity. She mocks 

"neither love nor beauty. She is gentle and kindly disposed. 

"Her mirth disarms and it is she who teaches us to laugh at 

"rogues and fools, whom but for her we might be so weak as 

"to despise and hate." 

And with these wise words of a very great Frenchman I 
bid you farewell. 
8 Barrow Street, New York. 
Saturday, June 26, xxi. 



466 




Dip. e/vj). 




AN HISTORICAL READING LIST FOR CHILDREN 

"Don't stop (I say) to explain that Hebe was (for once) the 
"legitimate daughter of Zeus and, as such, had the privilege to draw 
"wine for the Gods. Don't even stop, just yet, to explain who the 
"Gods were. Don't discourse on amber, otherwise ambergris ; don't 
"explain that *gris' in this connection doesn't mean *grease'; don't 
"trace it through the Arabic into Noah's Ark; don't prove its electri- 
"cal properties by tearing up paper into little bits and attracting them 
"with the mouth-piece of your pipe rubbed on your sleeve. Don't 
"insist philologically that when every shepherd Hells his tale' he is not 
"relating an anecdote but simply keeping *tally' of his flock. Just go 
"on reading, as well as you can, and be sure that when the children 
"get the thrill of the story, for which you wait, they will be asking 
"more questions, and pertinent ones, than you are able to answer. — 
("On the Art of Reading for Children," by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.) 

The Days Before History 



"How the Present Came From the Past," by Margaret E. Wells, 
Volume I. 

How earliest man learned to make tools and build homes, and the 
stories he told about the fire-makers, the sun and the frost. A simple, 
illustrated account of these things for children. "The Story of Ab," 
by Stanley Waterloo. 

A romantic tale of the time of the cave-man. (A much simplified 
edition of this for little children is "Ab, the Cave Man" adapted by 
William Lewis Nida.) 

469 



470 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

"Industrial and Social History Series," by Katharine E. Dopp. 

"The Tree Dwellers — The Age of Fear" 

"The Early Cave-Men— The Age of Combat" 

"The Later Cave-Men— The Age of the Chase" 

"The Early Sea People — First Steps in the Conquest of the Waters" 

"The Tent-Dwellers — The Early Fishing Men" 

Very simple stories of the way in which man learned how to make 
pottery, how to weave and spin, and how to conquer land and sea. 
"Ancient Man," written and drawn and done into colour by Hendrik 
Willem van Loon. 

The beginning of civilisations pictured and written in a new and 
fascinating fashion, with story maps showing exactly what happened in 
all parts of the world. A book for children of all ages. 



The Dawn of History 

*'The Civilisation of the Ancient Egyptians," by A. Bothwell Gosse. 

"No country possesses so many wonders, and has such a number 
of works which defy description." An excellent, profusely illustrated 
account of the domestic life, amusements, art, religion and occupations 
of these wonderful people. 

"How the Present Came From the Past," by Margaret E. Wells, 
Volume II. 

What the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the 
Persians contributed to civilisation. This is brief and simple and may 
be used as a first book on the subject. 
"Stories of Egyptian Gods and Heroes," by F. H. Brooksbank. 

The beliefs of the Egyptians, the legend of Isis and Osiris, the 
builders of the Pyramids and the Temples, the Riddle of the Sphinx, all 
add to the fascination of this romantic picture of Egypt. 
"Wonder Tales of the Ancient World," by Rev. James Baikie. 

Tales of the Wizards, Tales of Travel and Adventure, and Legends 
of the Gods all gathered from ancient Egyptian literature. 
"Ancient Assyria," by Rev. James Baikie. 

Which tells of a city 2800 years ago with a street lined with beau- 
tiful enamelled reliefs, and with libraries of clay. 
"The Bible for Young People," arranged from the King James Version, 

with twenty-four full page illustrations from old masters. 
"Old, Old Tales From the Old, Old Book," by Nora Archibald Smith. 

"Written in the East these characters live forever in the West — 



READING LIST FOR CHILDREN 471 

they pervade the world." A good rendering of the Old Testament. 
"The Jewish Fairy Book," translated and adapted by Gerald Fried- 
lander. 

Stories of great nobility and beauty from the Talmud and the old 
Jewish chap-books. 
"Eastern Stories and Legends," by Marie L. Shedlock. 

"The soldiers of Alexander who had settled in the East, wandering 
merchants of many nations and climes, crusading knights and hermits 
brought these Buddha Stories from the East to the West." 



Stories of Greece and Rome 

"The Story of the Golden Age," by James Baldwin. 

Some of the most beautiful of the old Greek myths woven Into the 
story of the Odyssey make this book a good introduction to the glories 
of the Golden Age. 
"A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales," by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 

with pictures by Maxfield Parrish. 
"The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy," by Padriac 
Colum, presented by Willy Pogany. 
An attractive, poetically rendered account of "the world's greatest 

story." 

"The Story of Rome," by Mary Macgregor, with twenty plates in 

colour. 

Attractively illustrated and simply presented story of Rome from 
the earliest times to the death of Augustus. 

"Plutarch's Lives for Boys and Girls," retold by W. H. Weston. 
"The Lays of Ancient Rome," by Lord Macaulay. 

"The early history of Rome is indeed far more poetical than any- 
thing else in Latin Literature." 
"Children of the Dawn," by Elsie Finnemore Buckley. 

Old Greek tales of love, adventure, heroism, skill, achievement, or 
defeat exceptionally well told. Especially recommended for girls. 
"The Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children," by Charles 

Kingsley. 
"The Story of Greece," by Mary Macgregor, with nineteen plates in 
colour by Walter Crane. 

Attractively illustrated and simply presented — a good book to 
begin on. 



472 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

Christianity 

*'The Story of Jesus," pictures from paintings by Giotto, Fra Angelico, 
Duccio, Ghirlandais, and Barnja-da-Siena. Descriptive text 
from the New Testament, selected and arranged by Ethel Na- 
talie Dana. 

A beautiful book and a beautiful way to present the Christ Story. 
"A Child's Book of Saints," by William Canton. 

Sympathetically told and charmingly written stories of men and 
women whose faith brought about strange miracles, and whose goodness 
to man and beast set the world wondering. 
"The Seven Champions of Christendom," edited by F. J. H. Darton. 

How the knights of old — St. George of England, St. Denis of 
France, St. James of Spain, and others — fought with enchanters and 
evil spirits to preserve the Kingdom of God. Fine old romances in- 
terestingly told for children. 
*'Stories From the Christian East," by Stephen Gaselee. 

Unusual stories which have been translated from the Coptic, the 
Greek, the Latin and the Ethiopic. 

**Jerusalem and the Crusades," by Estelle Blyth, with eight plates in 
colour. 

Historical stories telling how children and priestsj. hermits and 
knights all strove to keep the Cross in the East. 

Stories of Legend and Chivalry 

''Stories of Norse Heroes From the Eddas and Sagas," retold by E. M. 
Wilmot-Buxton. 

These are tales which the Northmen tell concerning the wisdom of 
All-Father Odin, and how all things began and how they ended. A 
good book for all children, and for story-tellers. 
*'The Story of Siegfried," by James Baldwin. 

A good introduction to this Northern hero whose strange and 
daring deeds fill the pages of the old sagas. 

*'The Story of King Arthur and His Knights," written and illustrated 
by Howard Pyle. 

This, and the companion volumes, "The Story of the Champions of 
the Round Table," "The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions," 
"The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur," form an incom- 
parable collection for children. 



READING LIST FOR CHILDREN 473 

"The Boy's King Arthur," edited by Sidney Lanier, illustrated by N. 
C. Wyeth. 

A very good rendering of Malory's King Arthur, made especially 
attractive by the coloured illustrations. 

"Irish Fairy Tales," by James Stephens, illustrated by Arthur Rack- 
ham. 

Beautifully pictured and poetically told legends of Ireland's epic 
hero Fionn. A book for the boy or girl who loves the old romances, 
and a book for story-telling or reading aloud. 

"Stories of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France," by A. J. 
Church. 

Stories from the old French and English chronicles showing the 
romantic glamour surrounding the great Charlemagne and his crusad- 
ing knights. 

"The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood," written and illustrated by 
Howard Pyle. 

Both in picture and in story this book holds first place in the hearts 
of children. 
"A Book of Ballad Stories," by Mary Macleod. 

Good prose versions of some of the famous old ballads sung by the 
minstrels of England and Scotland. 
"The Story of Roland," by James Baldwin. 

"There is, in short, no country in Europe, and no language, in 
which the exploits of Charlemagne and Roland have not at some time 
been recounted and sung." This book will serve as a good introduction 
to a fine heroic character. 

"The Boy's Froissart," being Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of Ad- 
venture, Battle, and Custom in England, France, Spain. 

"Froissart sets the boy's mind upon manhood and the man's mind 
upon boyhood." An invaluable background for the future study of 
history. 

"The Boy's Percy," being old ballads of War, Adventure and Love 
from Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, edited by 
Sidney Lanier. 

"He who walks in the way these following ballads point, will be 
manful in necessary fight, loyal in love, generous to the poor, tender in 
the household, prudent in living, merry upon occasion, and honest in 
all things." 

"Tales of the Canterbury Pilgrims," retold from Chaucer and others 
by E. J. H. Darton. 



474 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

"Sometimes a pilgrimage seemed nothing but an excuse for a 
lively and pleasant holiday, and the travellers often made themselves 
very merry on the road, with their jests and songs, and their flutes 
and fiddles and bagpipes." A good prose version much enjoyed by boys 
and girls. 
"Joan of Arc,'* written and illustrated by M. Boutet de Monvel. 

A very fine interpretation of the life of this great heroine. A book 
to be owned by every boy and girl. 
"When Knights Were Bold," by Eva March Tappan. 

Telling of the training of a knight, of the daily life in a castle, of 
pilgrimages and crusades, of merchant guilds, of schools and litera- 
ture, in short, a full picture of life in the days of chivalry. A good 
book to supplement the romantic stories of the time. 

Adventurers in New Worlds 

"A Book of Discovery," by M. B. Synge, fully illustrated from authen- 
tic sources and with maps. 
A thoroughly fascinating book about the world's exploration from 
the earliest times to the discovery of the South Pole. A book to be 
owned by older boys and girls who like true tales of adventure. 
"A Short History of Discovery From the Earliest Times to the Found- 
ing of the Colonies on the American Continent," written and 
done into colour by Hendrik Willem van Loon. 
"Dear Children : History is the most fascinating and entertaining 
and instructive of arts." A book to delight children of all ages. 
"The Story of Marco Polo," by Noah Brooks. 
"Olaf the Glorious," by Robert Leighton. 
An historical story of the Viking age. 
"The Conquerors of Mexico," retold from Prescott*s "Conquest of 

Mexico," by Henry Gilbert. 
"The Conquerors of Peru," retold from Prescott*s "Conquest of Peru," 

by Henry Gilbert. 
"Vikings of the Pacific," by A. C. Laut. 

Adventures of Bering the Dane; the outlaw hunters of Russia; 
Benyowsky, the Polish pirate ; Cook and Vancouver ; Drake, and other 
soldiers of fortune on the West Coast of America. 
*'The Argonauts of Faith," by Basil Mathews. 

The Adventures of the "Majrflower" Pilgrims. 
"Pathfinders of the West," by A. C. Laut. 



READING LIST FOR CHILDREN 475 

The thrilling story of the adventures of the men who discovered the 
great Northwest. 
"Beyond the Old Frontier," by George Bird Grinnell. 

Adventures of Indian Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders on the 
Pacific Coast. 

"A History of Tra,vel in America," by Seymour Dunbar, illustrated 
from old woodcuts and engravings. 4 volumes. 

An interesting book for children who wish to understand the prob- 
lems and difficulties their grandfathers had in the conquest of the West. 
This is a standard book upon the subject of early travel, but is so 
readable as to be of interest to older children. 

**The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators," by Hendrik Willem van 
Loon. Fully illustrated from old prints. 



The World's Progress in Invention — Art — Music. 

"Gabriel and the Hour Book," by Evaleen Stein. 

How a boy learned from the monks how to grind and mix the colours 
for illuminating the beautiful hand-printed books of the time and how 
he himself made books that are now treasured in the museums of France 
and England. 
"Historic Inventions," by Rupert S. Holland. 

Stories of the invention of printing, the steam-engine, the spinning- 
jenny, the safety-lamp, the sewing machine, electric light, and other 
wonders of mechanism. 

"A History of Everyday Things in England," written and illustrated 
by Marjorie and C. V. B. Quennell. 2 Volumes. 

A most fascinating book, profusely illustrated in black and white 
and in colour, giving a vivid picture of life in England from 1066-1799. 
It teUs of wars and of home-life, of amusements and occupations, of 
art and literature, of science and invention. A book to be owned by 
every boy and girl. 
"First Steps in the Enjoyment of Pictures," by Maude I. G. Oliver. 

A book designed to help children in their appreciation of art by giv- 
ing them technical knowledge of the media, the draughtsmanship, the 
composition and the technique of well-known American pictures. 
"Knights of Art," by Amy Steedman. 

Stories of Italian Painters. Attractively illustrated in colour from 
old masters. 



476 THE STORY OF MANKIND 

"Masters of Music," by Anna Alice Chapin. 

"Story Lives of Men of Science," by F. J. Rowbotham. 

"All About Treasures of the Earth," by Frederick A. Talbot. 

A book that tells many interesting things about coal, salt, iron, 
rare metals and precious stones. 
"The Boys' Book of New Inventions," by Harry E. Maule. 

An account of the madiines and mechancial processes that are 
making the history of our time more dramatic than that of any other 
age since the world began. 
"Masters of Space," by Walter Kellogg Towers. 

Stories of the wonders of telegraphing through the air and be- 
neath the sea with signals, and of speaking across continents. 
"All About Railways," by F. S. Hartnell. 

"The Man-of-War, What She Has Done and What She Is Doing," 
by Commander E. Hamilton Currey. 

True stories about galleys and pirate ships, about the Spanish 
Main and famous frigates, and about slave-hunting expeditions in the 
days of old. 



The Democracy of To-Day. 

"The Land of Fair Play," by Geoffrey Parsons. 

"This book aims to make clear the great, unseen services that 
America renders each of us, and the active devotion each of us must 
yield in return for America to endure." An excellent book on our 
government for boys and girls. 

"The American Idea as Expounded by American Statesmen," compiled 
by Joseph B. Gilder. 

A good collection, including The Declaration of Independence, The 
Constitution of the United States, the Monroe Doctrine, and the 
famous speeches of Washington, Lincoln, Webster and Roosevelt. 
"The Making of an American," by Jacob A. Riis. 

The true story of a Danish boy who became one of America's finest 
citizens. 
"The Promised Land," by Mary Antin. 

A true story about a little immigrant. "Before we came, the New 
World knew not the Old; but since we have begun to come, the 
Young World has taken the Old by the hand, and the two are learning 
to march side by side, seeking a common destiny." 



READING LIST FOR CHILDREN 477 

Illustrated Histories in French. 

(The colourful and graphic pictures make these histories beloved by- 
all children whether they read the text or not.) 
"Voyages et Glorieuses Decouvertes des Grands Navigateurs et Explo- 

rateurs Fran9ais, illustre par Edy Segrand." 
"Collection d'Albums Historiques." 

Louis XI, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de Job. 

Fran9ois I, texte de G. Gustave Tondouze, aquarelles de Job. 

Henri IV, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de H. Vogel. 

RicheHeu, texte de Th. Cahu, aquarelles de Maurice Leloir. 

Le Roy Soleil, texte de Gustave Tondouze, aquarelles de Maurice 
Leloir. 

Bonaparte, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de Job. 
"Fabliaux et Contes du Moyen-Age" ; illustrations de A. Robida. 



CONCERNING THE PICTURES 



CONCERNING THE PICTURES OF THIS BOOK AND A FEW 
WORDS ABOUT THE BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

The day of the historical textbook without illustrations has gone. 
Pictures and photographs of famous personages and equally famous oc- 
currences cover the pages of Breasted and Robinson and Beard. In 
this volume the photographs have been omitted to make room for a 
series of home-made drawings which represent ideas rather than events. 

While the author lays no claim to great artistic excellence (being 
possessed of a decided leaning towards drawing as a child, he was 
taught to play the violin as a matter of discipline,) he prefers to 
make his own maps and sketches because he knows exactly what he 
wants to say and cannot possibly explain this meaning to his more 
proficient brethren in the field of art. Besides, the pictures were all 
drawn for children and their ideas of art are very different from those 
of their parents. 

To all teachers the author would give this advice — let your boys and 
girls draw their history after their own desire just as often as you have 
a chance. You can show a class a photograph of a Greek temple or a 
medieval castle and the class will dutifully say, "Yes, Ma'am," and 
proceed to forget all about it. But make the Greek temple or the 
Roman castle the centre of an event, tell the boys to make their own 
picture of "the building of a temple," or "the storming of the castle," 
and they will stay after school-hours to finish the job. Most children, 
before they are taught how to draw from plaster casts, can draw after 
a fashion, and often they can draw remarkably well. The product of 
their pencil may look a bit prehistoric. It may even resemble the 
work of certain native tribes from the upper Congo. But the child is 

478 



CONCERNING THE PICTURES 479 

quite frequently prehistoric or upper-Congoish in his or her own tastes, 
and expresses these primitive instincts with a most astomshing accu- 
racy. , 1 1 n 

The main thing in teaching history, is that the pupil shall remem- 
ber certain events «in their proper sequence." The experiments of 
many years in the Children's School of New York has convinced the 
author that few children will ever forget what they have drawn, while 
very few will ever remember what they have merely read. 

It is the same with the maps. Give the child an ordinary conven- 
tional map with dots and lines and green seas and tell him to revaluate 
that geographic scene in his or her own terms. The mountains will be 
a bit out of gear and the cities will look astonishingly mediaeval. The 
outlines will be often very imperfect, but the general effect will be 
quite as truthful as that of our conventional maps, which ever since 
the days of good Gerardus Mercator have told a strangely erroneous 
story Most important of all, it will give the child a feeling of intimacy 
with historical and geographic facts which cannot be obtained in any 

other way. 

Neither the publishers nor the author claim that "the Story of Man- 
kind" is the last word to be said upon the subject of history for chil- 
dren. It is an appetizer. The book tries to present the subject m such 
a fashion that the average child shall get a taste for History and shall 

ask for more. 

To facilitate the work of both parents and teachers, the publishers 
have asked Miss Leonore St. John Power (who knows more upon this 
particular subject than any one else they could discover) to compile a 
list of readable and instructive books. 

The list was made and was duly printed. 

The parents who live near our big cities will experience no diffi- 
culty in ordering these volumes from their booksellers. Those who 
for the sake of fresh air and quiet, dwell in more remote spots, may 
not find it convenient to go to a book-store. In that case. Bom and 
Liveright, will be happy to act as middle-man and obtain the books 
that are desired. They want it to be distinctly understood that 
they have not gone into the retail book-business, but they are quite 
willing to do their share towards a better and more general historical 
education, and all orders will receive their immediate attention. 



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